Sukhbir Badal asks social organisations to help augment availability of oxygen concentrators

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday appealed to social organizations to come forward to help the state in augmenting its oxygen concentrator availability while taking a dig at Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amrinder Singh for rebuffing offers of help from even Congress leaders.

Badal said it was reprehensible that the Chief Minister had failed to respond to an offer by the Confederation of Colleges and Schools, headed by Ashwani Sekhri, to donate thousands of oxygen concentrators and establish Covid Care centres in its Nursing Colleges for more than fifteen days.

Talking to newsmen at Jalalabad, Badal said that the SAD had been successful in augmenting its Oxygen Sewa initiative — under which oxygen concentrators are supplied free of cost to the residences of Covid patients — to cover fifteen constituencies in the last one week.

“We received help from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) as well as NGOs to carry out this task. We are thankful to them for this. However more needs to be done. We need to cover the entire state and provide oxygen concentrators to Covid patients at their doorstep because they are wary of going to government hospitals, due to the lack of adequate healthcare facilities in these institutions. I, hence, appeal to social organisations and NGOs to fan out across the state and provide Oxygen concentrators in bulk to needy patients,” Badal said while launching an Oxygen Sewa service here at Jalalabad.

The SAD president, who was accompanied by Hansraj Josan, Dr Mohinder Rinwa Prem Valecha and Ashok Aneja , also announced that once the SAD formed a government in the state, a medical college would be established at Fazilka.

Badal also decried the shifting of ventilator he had given to the Jalalabad hospital elsewhere. He said it was unfortunate that even doctors had been shifted out of the Jalalabad hospital during the Congress rule.

The SAD president also highlighted how gangsters had been given a free rein during the Congress’ rule with cases of extortions being at an all-time rise. He said he continuously receives calls from people telling him how they were being threatened and how the police were failing to protect them.
“This is because Congress legislators are hand-in-glove with gangsters”. He also requested the district police not to register false cases at the instance of Congress legislators.

Badal also asked the chief minister to tell one village he or his ministers had visited, despite the high incidence of Covid in rural areas of the State. He said instead of attending to the people the Congress ministers had left them to their fate. He also highlighted the fact that despite a severe shortage of vaccines, the Punjab government had not thought it fit to allocate Rs 1,000 crore for the immediate purchase of vaccines.