Chandigarh, June 5
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema said that the orders of Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu to withdraw the vaccines from the private hospitals proved that the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government had committed a massive vaccine scam. In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Saturday, Harpal Singh Cheema demanded from the Punjab Chief Minister that Health Minister Balbir Sidhu should be immediately removed from the Punjab Cabinet and a criminal case should be registered against the persons involved in the vaccine scam including the minister. He said that this medicine was not a common medicine but a life saving medicine to prevent Covid and it should have been dealt with more seriously.
Cheema said that the government had shamelessly made huge profits by selling free vaccines to private hospitals. He said that at a time when the people were expecting help from the government; the government was trying to rob them of their money. “It was the right of the people of Punjab to get free vaccination and the government should take action in this regard,” he added. Cheema further said that the Captain government should immediately refund the money to the people of Punjab who were robbed by private hospitals due to the vaccine scam. He said that it was the duty of the state government to help the people of the state in every possible way in times of distress but the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government of Punjab had also used the scourge of Covid pandemic to raise money by looting the people.
The AAP leader said that the Captain government had procured about 1.40 lakh doses of the state government quota at the cost of Rs 400, but the Captain government had earned crores by selling these doses to private hospitals at the cost of Rs 1,060. Cheema alleged that the money collected from the sale of vaccines of the people of Punjab, to the private hospitals had been passed on by the Captain government to former Congress national president Rahul Gandhi; that is why the Congress High Command had remained silent on the vaccine issue.
Cheema said that the Captain government had betrayed the people of Punjab by selling the vaccines bought in the name of the people at cheap rates and had given free hand to the private hospitals to rob the people of the state financially; on whose vote the Congress party government led by Captain Amarinder Singh was formed. He said that it was necessary to vaccinate the people of Punjab against the Covid-19 virus, but the Congress government closed the government vaccination centers in the state leaving the people of the state to die of the Covid pandemic.
