Hyderabad, April  29 :  The online meeting of Joint Platform of 10 Central Trade Unions (CTUs) and Independent Sectoral Federations and Associations held on Wednesday expressed grave concern at the cruel insensitivity of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in addressing and combating the second wave of the Covid Pandemic.
The leaders of CTUs—NTUC AITUC HMS CITU AIUTUC TUCC SEWA AICCTU LPF UTUC and Sectoral Federations/Associations said the alarming country wide surge of this second wave of Covid has thrown the lives of the people, working people in particular in total jeopardy. The daily infection count has already crossed 3 lakh and is estimated to grow further in the coming days. Number of daily deaths too has surged, they felt.
This was informed to all units and members in a circular by All India Bank Employees’ Association (AIBEA) General Secretary and CPI National Council member Ch Venkatahalam and it was e-mailed to UNI.
The CTUs said a substantial part of deaths is preventable, being caused due to non availability of basic infrastructure, oxygen, hospital beds and essential medicines.
The CTUs and Sectoral Federations/Associations have written to the Prime Minister in this regard.
In the midst of such grave humanitarian crisis, the Central government ridiculously draws satisfaction over overcoming the crisis under the leadership of Mr Narendra Modi. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has made mindless self-congratulatory statement that their programme of privatisation/disinvestment is on track and in progress.
Caught unprepared, despite the warning about a second country wide wave, the Central government is now trying to blame the people, the state governments and everybody except itself for the surge of casualty with much more intensity and speed.
The reprimand of Election Commission of India (ECI) by some High Courts has vindicated the stand of Trade Unions having taken time to time. Now only the order has come not to organise any rally, celebration from May 2 to 15 in the five election bound states, the CTU leaders said.
They said there is serious shortage of vaccines, testing facilities, hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen, medicines and above all trained personnel – doctors, nurses and other medical staff. The front-line workers and employees have overworked and lack adequate protection. Instead of addressing these serious issues, BJP leaders including Union Ministers are engaged in shifting the responsibility to the state governments and indulging in blame games, they remarked.(UNI)