Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah has urged the State government to give compensation for all COVID-19 victims instead of sticking to the order of providing compensation to only one member of the family.
More than 3.5 lakh people have died owing to COVID as against the government’s claims of only about 37,000 victims, he said.
He alleged that 1,500 tonnes of gold, worth ₹4,17,000 crore, had been mortgaged by people in four different private financial companies in the State to raise resources for meeting hospital expenses.
Another Congress member Ramalinga Reddy took exception to the State government bringing in conditions, like upper age limit of 60 years and possession of a BPL card, to be eligible for compensation in case of a COVID-19 death. He urged the government to remove such conditions.
Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar also urged the government to provide jobs to the family members of those who died owing to the shortage of oxygen.
Sanitiser ‘scam’
Mr. Siddaramaiah also produced a sanitiser bottle in the Assembly to claim that it was a sub-standard one. He alleged that the government had procured these bottles at a cost of ₹9.66 crore from a company. But the sanitiser had already changed its colour and it had been declared as sub-standard, he pointed out.
Stating that already ₹2 crore had been paid to the company by the government, Mr. Siddaramaiah termed it as a scam and an instance of corruption in the handling of second wave of the pandemic.
