NEW DELHI: Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday wrote to Union minister Piyush Goyal raising once again the issue of less number of vaccine doses reaching the city and seeking assistance on many levels. Talking about Delhi’s complete dependence on neighbouring states for medical oxygen, Sisodia, the nodal minister of Covid, complained to the central government that Delhi is not getting what it has been promised.
“In spite of the additional allocation made about 10 days ago, Delhi has not received it even for a single day. Most of our officers and ministers are in the process of rationing supply of medical oxygen to various Covid hospitals,” Sisodia said in his letter.
Sisodia said the Centre should raise the city’s daily quota of medical oxygen from 490 MT to 976 MT as thousands of beds for Covid-19 patients will be ready in 10 days. “The people and the Government of NCT of Delhi will be extremely grateful to the government of India if it can kindly increase the allocation from the present 490 MT per day to 976 MT per day, preferably from nearby oxygen plants, reducing the turnaround time,” Sisodia wrote to Goyal.
The deputy chief minister further said that on an average there has been 25,000 cases per day in the national capital, of which 10 per cent required some sort of hospitalisation and oxygen support. Further, Sisodia highlighted another inability of Delhi and asked the Centre’s help with infrastructure like railways and tankers for transporting medical oxygen.
“It is our humble request to provide transport infrastructure including railways and tankers for additional allocation, since Delhi being a non-industrial state and accordingly does not have its own infrastructure,” added the deputy chief minister in the letter.
‘Allocate from nearby place’
In his letter to Goyal, Sisodia stated that additional quota to Delhi has been made from the plants which are located more than 1,500 km from Delhi such as Durgapur, Rourkela and Kalinga Nagar, and urged that the quota should be supplied from a nearby place