Dehradun: Senior Congress leader Kishore Upadhyay sat on a dharna here on Monday accusing the Uttarakhand government of failing to handle the Covid-19 situation and alleged there was an acute shortage of oxygen, beds, and medicines in the state.
Alleging that people are dying without oxygen in Uttarakhand, Upadhyay said there is no oxygen, no medicines, or beds in the hospitals.
"The social media is full of desperate cries for oxygen, ventilators, and beds but the government is in deep sleep," he said. Terming the deaths of Covid-19 patients for want of oxygen as "collective murder" by the state government, the former Pradesh Congress Committee president said there is also a shortage of staff at the hospitals.
"At a time when trained people from medical, paramedical, military and paramilitary forces should have been put on Covid duty to deal with the surge in cases, the state government is not even able to properly utilise the available human resource," the Congress leader said.
He demanded immediate issuance of a dedicated phone number in each district that gives correct information on the availability of beds, oxygen, test facilities, drugs and ambulances at hospitals.
ICU beds, other equipment, and PPE kits should be made available in hilly areas of the state which suffer from their perennial shortage, Upadhyay said and demanded that some beds in the hospitals of Haldwani, Udham Singh Nagar, Haridwar and Dehradun should be reserved for Covid-19 patients from the hilly region.
The poor, labourers, marginal farmers and women should be given economic assistance besides free rations and one free LPG cylinder each month to every poor family, he said.
They should also be exempted from paying their water and electricity bills, Upadhyay added.