Chandigarh, May 6
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab president and Member of Parliament Bhagwant Mann have asked Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh to convene a special meeting of the Finance Minister and the Health department in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and have also requested to announce special budget arrangements to strengthen the health infrastructure. In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Thursday, Bhagwant Mann said that there was a need to strengthen the health infrastructure in Punjab to combat the Covid pandemic and for this, the Chief Minister should announce special budget arrangements to ensure the development of health facilities in the hospitals with new recruitments and immediate regularisation of the contractual employees.
Mann said that the doctors were resigning due to lack of high quality health facilities in the government hospitals, which was very unfortunate. “The government should protect the morale of the doctors and other medical staff from being hindered and strengthen the government structure to curb the looting of private hospitals,” he added. He said that Covid can be fought not only by prioritising oxygen production, but also by strengthening the health infrastructure. He further said that the Punjab government needs to improve its attitude towards the health sector in the wake of Covid’s third wave warning. Mann said that he was not against the private hospitals but was against the exploitation.
“On the one hand, the private hospitals are taking lakhs of rupees from the Covid patients in the name of treatment; on the other hand, the Punjab government is providing government ventilators to the private hospitals,” said Mann. He said that treatments worth lakhs of rupees were out of the reach of the common man. Mann said that the failure of the Badal and the Captain governments in the state was taking a heavy toll on the lives of the common man. “Earlier, the Badals and now Captain have decimated the government machinery,” he added. The AAP leader said that the Badals during their tenure had not only ravaged the government but also the hospitals of the Shiromani Committee. He said that the Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht had also stressed upon the need for setting up modern hospitals where patients could be treated free of cost.
