Jagan alleges bid to cover up diarrhoea deaths

Vizianagaram: YSRCP president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy lambasted the state government for allegedly diverting the attention of people from its ‘failures’ in the past three months. He alleged that the coalition government has tried to hide the Gurla diarrhoea outbreak and deliberately minimised the number of deaths in order to dilute the issue.

Jagan visited Gurla village where more than a dozen of people died of diarrhoea and several others fell sick on Thursday. He interacted with the families of the deceased and announced financial assistance Rs 2 lakh each to them.

Addressing the media later, the former chief minister said that during the YSRCP government, villages had clinics with medical staff and people could avail the services in emergency but now the government has completely rolled back all those institutions at village level.

“The first death occurred on September 20, but the government remained silent for 35 days until I tweeted about it on October 19. Even now, ministers and officials are providing different information about the death toll. The disease has claimed 14 lives in the mandal in a short time and finally Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was also forced to accept the fact,” the YSRCP said.

He asked why the government could not shift the patients to Vizianagaram or Vizag but simply provided treatment on school benches. “Is this the way to treat the people? Around 340 patients are being treated in government hospitals in Gurla, with over 100 receiving care in private hospitals, he said.

He claimed that they brought ‘grama swaraj’ (village self-rule) by providing services at the village through several institutions in medical, agriculture and other fields but the current government wound up all those units and pushed the people into troubles.

He alleged that thought the diarrhoea claimed several lives, the government didn’t respond well and has not announced any ex-gratia to the bereaved families. “We brought 17 medical colleges with super speciality facilities and five of them have started functioning. Rest of the collages are yet to be started but the TDP government wrote a letter to the Union government expressing its inability to run the colleges. The government has stopped all the welfare schemes like Rythu Bharosa, Asara, Arogyasri and many more.

Now the rural AP lost its glory and is struggling with several issues but the government is giving deaf ear to problems of people,” he said. He said Chandrababu Naidu is an expert in diversion politics and he never faces administrative challenges but simply tries to divert the attention of people from the issue.

Referring to reports of his petition in National Company Law Tribunal against his sister Sharmila and mother Vijayamma over properties, he accused the ruling coalition of dragging their sister and mother into politics. “They are bringing even my sister and mother into state political scne and magnifying my family issues. All those are my family and personnel issues. Don’t the other leaders in AP have such issues in their families?” he said. YSRCP leaders mobilised a large number of people for party president’s visit.