Modi says Railways, Air Force being deployed to reduce transportation time for oxygen tankers
New Delhi: Amid several states flagging scarcity of medical oxygen in the COVID-19 fight, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said Railways and Air Force are being deployed to reduce the transportation time for oxygen tankers and all state governments need to work together to meet requirements of life-saving gas and medicines.
Chairing a high-level meeting with chief ministers of 11 states and Union territories with maximum COVID-19 cases, Modi urged states to work as one and coordinate with one another to fulfil medical requirements, asserting that “if we work as one nation, there will not be any scarcity of resources”.
Modi said every state should ensure that no oxygen tanker, irrespective of its destination, is stopped or gets stranded, a statement said.
The Prime Minister’s call for coordination and working together to meet the spiralling health crisis comes amid multiple reports of medical oxygen supply being stopped at borders of one state or the other during transit.
Modi noted that the Railways and Air Force have been deployed to reduce the travel time of oxygen tankers and assured states of the Centre’s full support in the fight against the pandemic.
It was the Prime Minister’s third meeting with chief ministers in the last five weeks, while he also held his fourth review meeting in one week to review the oxygen availability situation, officials said.
Modi asked states to take stringent measures against hoarding and black marketing of essential medicines and injections.
He also called for making people continuously aware so that they do not indulge in panic buying. He said that with united efforts, they will together be able to stop this second wave of the pandemic across the country.
With some Opposition-ruled states criticising the Centre’s recently announced vaccination policy as discriminatory against states, Modi said the Union government has already provided them more than 15 crore doses free of cost.
Taking note of the points raised by chief ministers on the issue of oxygen supply, Modi said there is a continuous effort to boost it and all related departments and ministries are also working together. Industrial oxygen has also been diverted to meet immediate requirements, he noted.
He said each state should ensure that no oxygen tanker, irrespective of which state it is headed for, is stopped or gets stranded, and urged chief ministers to set up a high-level coordination committee to carry oxygen to different hospitals of the state.
This coordination committee should ensure that as soon as there is an allotment of oxygen from the Centre, it can deliver oxygen as per requirement in different hospitals of the state immediately, he said.
In a related development, the Prime Minister on Friday called for utilising the industry’s full potential to meet the demand of medical oxygen in the coming days, saying there is a need to increase the availability of oxygen cylinders as well as to upgrade logistical facilities for its transportation.
In a virtual meeting with leading oxygen manufacturers, including Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Modi urged the industry to utilise tankers meant to transport other gases for oxygen supply, saying the time now is not only to deal with the challenges but also to provide solutions in a very short time.
He stressed the need to maintain good coordination between the government and the oxygen producers, according to a statement.