Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has questioned the TS government’s decision to halt the COVID vaccination for the last three days when it had 6.93 lakh doses available with it and another three lakh doses are scheduled to arrive in the next few days.
Party president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Monday told a virtual press conference that he senses a “conspiracy” behind the halting of vaccination totally to defame the Central government and demanded that the State government make public details of the number of doses received and used till date. “The Centre had about issued 61.5 lakh doses so far of which little more than 54.48 lakh doses have been utilised. What happened to the rest? Will there will be a wastage of six lakh doses? We need the Chief Minister to respond to this and also explain why his government does not want to implement ‘Arogyasri’ or ‘Ayushman Bharat’ medical insurance for COVID after making a promise,” he said.
Mr. Sanjay Kumar wanted to know the functioning of the COVID Task Force committee and about the decisions taken till now to ensure there was no shortages in beds, medical personnel, medicines, oxygen or ambulances. “Have they visited any hospital till date? What are the steps taken to control black marketing? Do they know the conditions prevailing in the rural areas where people are dying without proper medicare?,” he sought to know.
The BJP leader charged that there was a shortage of manpower in all hospitals with the kith and kin of the patients themselves forced to tend to the COVID patients without any protective kits. “Has the government analysed why its recruitment is failing? The only way to attract talent is to give incentives and go for regular recruitment because the current healthcare personnel are overworked,” he said.
He, however, sought to differentiate between “caring” private hospitals and those resorting to “exorbitant” billing and urged the government to provide necessary infrastructure support to the former. The Centre has provided essential medical equipment and it was up to the TS government to provide “correct” details about positive cases, shortages if any and mortalities so that more assistance would come by, rather than present a rosy picture by “fudging figures”,” claimed the BJP MP from Karimnagar.
Brushing aside the Centre’s appreciation on COVID situation in Telangana, he claimed it was “horrible” with cases being “high as also mortalities as the available healthcare infrastructure was inadequate”. The High Court too has doubted the official figures, he added.
