Health Minister Banna Gupta on Sunday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government at the Centre was prejudiced against Jharkhand and accused the Centre of not extending complete support in providing vaccine doses, ramdesivir, oxygen, ventilators or other infrastructure to the State.
“Despite a huge shortage of Ramdesivir in Jharkhand, we are not getting enough supply of it,” he said.
In spite of the high mortality rate, the state was not given adequate doses of vaccines, Gupra said, adding, “We are asked to give advance planning so that vaccine could be made available to us, but when we demanded vaccine in advance, we were not given the vaccine.”
The Minister also accused the Narendra Modi-led government of distributing people’s hard earned money to countries like Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Nepal and Africa.
Gupta also questioned the logic of giving 45 lakh doses of vaccine to Pakistan, 20 lakh doses to Bangladesh, 15 lakh doses to Myanmar, 10 lakh doses to Nepal and 5 lakh to Sri Lanka and a significant number of doses to several other countries.
Accusing Modi of trying to take political advantage of the pandemic, Gupta also said that there is a lot of difference between what he says and what he actually does.
“On one hand, he appeals to people to maintain social distancing while on the other hand, he addresses rallies in West Bengal attended by lakhs of people violating the Covid protocol,” said Gupta. He said that the government was in a two-way battle with coronavirus; firstly, they are trying to provide better health services to cure people and secondly, they are giving befitting political replies to the attacks made by BJP.
Gupta also questioned BJP at the centre for not imposing lockdown given the fact that fatality is much higher this time than the first wave of the pandemic.