SHILLONG, May 30: The Congress has observed that the state government is not prepared with adequate infrastructure, including oxygen, ICUs and trained manpower to operate ventilators, to provide support for critical COVID cases.
The observation was made by the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) during a Zoom meeting held on Saturday to discuss the COVID situation in the state.
The meeting, which was chaired by CLP leader Mukul Sangma, expressed concerns on the alarming number of deaths of COVID patients, particularly in Shillong. The CLP attributed the deaths to the government’s decision on home isolation of patients and various inadequacies in the hospitals.
“There has been a delay in setting up the Corona Care Centres and fully equipped COVID hospitals. The government has also neglected the ASHAs, who are the first-line of contact during the pandemic, by not paying their dues and incentives,” Congress leader, Ampareen Lyngdoh said.
According to her, the government’s decision to provide ex gratia of Rs 50,000 each to the families of people, who died of COVID, is too little.
Since the pandemic has been declared a national disaster, the CLP felt the government should treat every death due to COVID as a part of the disaster and provide ex gratia as per the provision of law duly notified under the National Disaster Management Act, she said.
The CLP has asked the government to provide financial support to the Community Isolation Centres for logistics.
“The government should immediately ramp up the healthcare facilities in other districts and make each healthcare centre in the districts and the sub-divisions functional, including placement of manpower for COVID as well as non-COVID patients to decrease referrals to Shillong and Tura and thereby, reduce the pressure of availability of beds in the hospitals at the two places,” Lyngdoh said.
She further stated that the CLP has decided to inspect the Corona Care Centres and the health centres in every district from next week to find out the facilities provided by the government and deficiencies, if any.
