Congress accuses Centre of criminal mismanagement of Covid vaccination

Khammam: The district Congress leaders have accused the BJP government at Centre failing miserably in vaccinating the public against Covid-19.

The BJP government instead of repenting for its criminal mismanagement of Covid pandemic and failure to vaccinate people of the country was just interested in protecting its image and was engaged in mudslinging against opposition parties, Congress leaders said.

A delegation of Congress leaders led by its district president Puvvalla Durga Prasad and former MLC Potla Nageswara Rao, the party official Spokesperson, M Srinivas Reddy submitted a memorandum, addressed to the President of India, to the district administration on Friday.

In the memorandum, they alleged that instead of channelling resources to bring India out of the Covid crisis, the BJP government exported vaccines and failed to place orders for vaccines required for vaccinating the people.

The other nations in the world placed orders for vaccines in May 2020, but the Modi government and State governments have so far placed orders for just 39 crore doses of vaccine for 140 crore population.

As per the data revealed by the Central government by May 31, 2021 the government was able to administer the first dose of vaccine to 21.31 crore people while the second dose was administered to just 4.45 crore people which accounts for just 3.17 per cent of the entire population, Congress leaders said.

When the Indian citizens were being infected with the Covid-19, the Centre was busy exporting the vaccine to other nations and around 6.63 crore doses of vaccine was exported to foreign countries. And that proved costly for Indian citizens, they averred.

In the rollout of Covid vaccine, the Centre had intentionally created a digital divide making the Cowin portal mandatory to register for vaccines and thus it left out rural masses. On an average per day 16 lakh people were vaccinated.

Going by that rate it would take at least three years to vaccinate the young generation and then how could the government protect its citizens from the third wave, they posed and appealed to the President to direct the Centre to vaccinate one crore population per day.

They also wanted distribution of vaccines free of cost to the States and private hospitals.