Akali Dal accuses Cong. govt. in Punjab of ‘non-serious’ approach to COVID

Punjab’s former Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Thursday accused the ruling Congress authorities of adopting a “non-serious” approach to sort out the pandemic.

Mr. Badal urged Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to take rapid measures to set up mini-COVID centres, speed up the vaccination course of, re-employ medical workers and put a cap on therapy expenses in personal hospitals apart from waiving energy payments for six months.

“State government has shown a complete non-serious approach in dealing with the COVID situation. The need of the hour was to establish mini COVID centres with level one and two facilities in all blocks of the State. Vaccination was also necessary, and that the government should accelerate the vaccination process and ensure the entire State was vaccinated in the next three months. He said 500 teams could be formed to cover all 12,000 villages and that the government should augment its vaccine supply by going in for global tenders,” he mentioned, addressing a press convention.

Mr. Badal alleged personal hospitals had been charging ₹2.5 lakh to ₹3 lakh as hospitalisation expenses from COVID sufferers. He demanded subsidising therapy of sufferers by the Punjab authorities and taking over the accountability of paying the hospitalisation expenses.

“The government should waive electricity and water bills for a six-month period. Also, financial relief should be extended to taxi drivers, rickshaw pullers, small shop keepers and labourers whose livelihood had been severely affected due to the ongoing lockdown in the State,” he added.