Suvendu announces health, pension benefits for mediapersons

Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday fulfilled his earlier promise by introducing a host of schemes and programmes for the benefit of journalists and common people, including providing health insurance to the media personnel and launching a specialised disaster management force christened Arjun Vahini to be recruited preferably from the defence personnel, including the (retired) Agni Veer jawans.

Accordingly, the Chief Minister doubled the pension benefits for the retired journalists from Rs 2,500 to Rs 5000 besides bringing them into the Chief Minister’s health insurance scheme. Accordingly, the journalists would benefit from the Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojana by getting free medical treatment up to Rs 5 lakh in designated 38,000 Government and private hospitals across India, including AIIMS, Christian Medical College (CMC)-Vellore, Tata Cancer Hospital in Mumbai, PGIMER-Chandigarh, and Dr Reddy’s Hospital in Hyderabad.

In West Bengal, the facility would be available in 1900 state and private hospitals. While the scheme was available only to Accredited journalists earlier, it would benefit other media men too, officials said. As for pension, the journalists in districts would get Rs 3,000 per month in place of earlier Rs 1,000.

Regarding ‘Arjun Vahini’, the Chief Minister said that the Force would presently comprise 200 personnel to begin with and later the number of the staff would be increased, adding, “priority of appointment would be given to the former defence personnel including the (retiring) Agni Veers.”

Presently, 100 such Arjun ‘veers’ would be posed in Kolkata and the remain 100 would be split in fraction of fifty between Darjeeling hills and Sunderbans, he said, adding, “we will recruit more such members of the Arjun brigade for tourist places like Digha, Mandarmani, Mukutmanipur etc.”

Once again launching a scathing attack on the previous Mamata Banerjee Government for what he called “institutionalising corruption at all levels.” The Chief Minister on Tuesday directed a crackdown on various corrupt practices in the marketplaces regarding weight and measures and adulteration, including using spurious colours to brighten up vegetables, preserve fish and colour sweetmeat.

“We find very few people not being cheated in weight and measures in the market daily… we will not allow this to happen… besides, spurious colours are used to preserve fish, vegetables and even colour the sweetmeat … this also has to stop,” he said, accusing the previous Government, saying, “they had institutionalised corruption from top to bottom.”