THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former health minister V S Sivakumar MLA of the Congress began a dawn to dusk hunger strike in front of Government Secretariat here on Saturday. The fast is in protest against the present left government's move to sabotage the health schemes including 'Karunya' and 'Sukrutham'introduced by the former government led by Congress. Inaugurating the agitation Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said the government is showing a negative attitude towards the people-friendly schemes of the previous government. Over 40 lakh people of the state would have benefited from these schemes, Chennithala said.
Opposition's strike assumes significance as the government will present the budget on March 3 and the budget may announce merger of the schemes of previous government under one comprehensive scheme.
However, health minister K K Shailaja has said the government will not stop any of the health schemes. Criticising Sivakumar's fast, she said the government has given due importance to all social security programmes aimed at the welfare of the people and the agitation was politically motivated. Noting that the Left government had cleared the accumulated dues to people through various welfare schemes, Shailaja said Rs 800 crore was pending to be distributed over various health schemes. An amount of Rs 391 crore was due to be given to the Karunya Fund and the former minister was holding a hunger strike only to hide all these failures, she alleged.
Finance minister Thomas Isaac had also refuted allegations that the left government was about to abolish all the schemes. He said the idea is to merge all the welfare schemes into a unified scheme rather than have multiple schemes.Interestingly, K M Mani, the former finance minister who walked out of UDF announced plans to go on hunger strike on Tuesday, February 28, against the alleged scrapping of 'Karunya'.
Various schemes introduced by previous government include ‘Sukrutham’ to provide free cancer treatment to people through government hospitals and ‘Samashawasam’ which provides financial assistance to Kidney patients belonging to BPL families who are undergoing dialysis at least once a month.
‘Thalolam’ provides free treatment to children below the age of 18, who are suffering from kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases, cerebral palsy, brittle bone disease, haemophilia, thalassemia, sickle cell anaemia, orthopaedic deformities and other neuro-developmental disabilities, congenital anomalies.
‘Snehasparsham’ is intended to protect and help unwed mothers and government provides a monthly allowance of Rs 1000 to each of them. ‘Karunya’ is intended to raise resources for the medical and educational support of physically or mentally challenged children attending special schools or who are inmates of orphanages/ institutions etc. The aim is to attract depositors who are willing to deposit sums of at least Rs 1 lakh or multiples of the figure as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funds.
‘Aswasa Kiranam’ envisages assisting the care givers of physically and mentally disabled bed-ridden patients, who are family members or relatives of the bedridden patients, as these caregivers are not in a position to take up employment for self-sustenance. The scheme provides a monthly assistance of Rs 525 to caregivers of all bed-ridden patients who needs a full-time care giver.