THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A day after Congress state president K Sudhakaran urged the LDF government to update the Covid death toll, he alleged that the government was dilly-dallying on providing compensation to the bereaved families. He alleged that by fudging the death toll, thousands of people, especially the poor, will lose the compensation.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan also urged the state government on Thursday to ensure compensation to all eligible families without any delay. Satheesan reiterated that the death statistics should be factual. It should be recalled that Satheesan had raised the alleged discrepancies in the death toll in the state during the recent assembly session.
”The relatives of people who lost their lives in the first and second Covid waves should be included in the compensation list as per the directive of the Supreme Court. The state health department along with the local bodies should reexamine the Covid death toll,” said Satheesan.On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had issued a directive to the Central and state governments to provide an ex-gratia compensation of Rs 4 lakh under the Disaster Management Act (DMA) to the family of each person who died of Covid.
Sudhakaran said following the Supreme Court directive, the state government should reexamine the list of the deceased. He said the current statistics provided by the state government show that 13,225 people have died due to the pandemic. But in reality, at least 25,000 people have died as per the statistics provided in a report of the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).”
