BHUBANESWAR: The State government has expressed displeasure over delayed payment of ex-gratia to the kin of Covid-19 victims by some of the districts. Although the Supreme Court (SC) had asked to complete disbursement of ex-gratia before its hearing on March 7, more than 1,000 applications are still pending. Of the 17,115 applications received from 30 districts, around 16,000 have been cleared and kin of deceased disbursed ex gratia of Rs 50,000 each.
According to the statistics available on the Covid-19 ex-gratia Assistance Payment System (CAPS), the maximum 1,750 have got the assistance in Khurda, 1,283 in Cuttack, 1,036 in Sundargarh, 1,023 in Ganjam, 794 in Bargarh, 739 in Puri, 609 in Balasore and 540 in Angul. As the release of ex-gratia payment was delayed due to late issuance of Official Documents of Death due to Covid-19 (ODDC), Additional Chief Secretary of Health department RK Sharma has asked all CDMOs to issue the documents immediately. The districts have been instructed to issue ODDC by coordinating with officials without any separate application and not to unnecessarily harass the relatives of people who died in Covid-19.
Taking serious note of the delayed audit of Covid deaths, Sharma has directed all CDMOs to report Covid deaths to the Director of Health Services (DHS) on the very next day with full details. Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and CDMOs have been asked to verify the cases where details of addresses of the deceased are yet to be reconciled from the hospital records and rectify the errors which are not traceable.
The State government has also initiated steps to reflect all Covid deaths in the health department dashboard.