Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Saturday launched a scathing attack on chief minister K Chandrashekar's management of Telangana's Covid-19 response.
Demanding that Covid-19 treatment be brought under Aarogyasri scheme so that BPL families need not pay anything for it, the Congress leader urged the state government to increase testing and then shore up medical infrastructure by supplying government hospitals with enough ventilators and oxygen-rigged beds.
Uttam Kumar Reddy was addressing party cadres on Facebook as part of the SpeakUpTelangana campaign organised by the TPCC Covid-19 Task Force Committee.
Demanding regulation of charges being extracted by private hospitals for Covid-19 treatment, he said the negligence displayed by Chandrashekar Rao in handling the coronavirus pandemic was nothing short of cruelty against humanity because it has killed hundreds and infected thousands.
He said the chief mininster had adopted a non-serious approach to Covid-19 right from the beginning and allowed it to cause havoc. "While the rest of the world is taking measures to defeat the virus, hte KCR government is still in deep slumber.
It has completely failed to prevent the spread of the virus and no measures have been taken to provide treatment to infected people,” he said.
He said it was a big mistake to let the entire load of treating Covid-19 patients fall upon one hospital (Hyderabad's Gandhi Hospital) which over-burdened doctors and paramedical staff.
He said innumerable complaints of negligence have been voiced against the hospital in the past few months but no arrangements were made at other government hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients.
“The KCR government has even failed to provide basic oxygen supply tto government hospitals. There is a huge shortage of ventilators, oxygen-equipped beds, doctors, paramedics and other infrastructure," he said.
He said that as part of the SpeakUpTelangana campaign, thousands of Congress workers have uploaded videos, images and information exposing the negligence of the government in handling the Covid-19 situation.
He challenged the state government to act upon the issues highlighted by Congress supporters if it was really serious in defeating Covid-19.
