COVID-19: Former Pondy CM Narayanasamy wants coordinated efforts to implement restrictions

Former Puducherry Chief Minister and senior Congress leader V Narayanasamy on Tuesday expressed concern over 'chaotic and unclear' orders from the administration with regard to COVID-19 restrictions in the union territory and called for greater coordination between various departments in implementing them.

Lockdown orders were frequently coming out in different forms causing confusion among merchants, traders, fleet operators and others, he said at a virtual media interaction here.

"Police, Revenue and other departments are issuing instructions without any coordination. Police are keen about collecting penalties from those not wearing masks and other departments function in isolation," he said, adding a coordinated approach is absolutely necessary.

He said the Centre should also ensure that the oxygen requirements of hospitals including privately managed health facilities in Puducherry should be met first and then only any export of oxygen to other States should be arranged.

"I have information that the Centre has without the knowledge of the Puducherry government-directed export of medical oxygen cylinders produced within Puducherry to other States," he alleged and said such a step on the part of the Centre would only stand in the way of the hospitals meeting the requirements of patients within Puducherry.

The second wave of Covid-19 was proving to be "very ferocious and lethal as the number of new cases and deaths had been on the rise."

Proper planning needs to be done by the Puducherry government in association with the hospitals including JIPMER to chalk out a coordinated approach.

He said that several infrastructural facilities created by the previous government remained unutilised in hospitals.

Ventilators donated by several voluntary organisations were also gathering dust in hospitals and steps should be taken to use ventilators without loss of time keeping in mind the spurt in demand for them.

He said the 'alarming rise in number of new cases' was attributable to the lack of awareness on the part of the people in observing safety norms and also failure on the part of political parties and their candidates during the poll campaign prior to April 6 Assembly polls here.

Time should not be lost to contain the spread of the virus and joint efforts should be made by the government along with hospitals and health administrators.