Jaipur: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Thursday termed the Centre's welfare measures for children who lost their parents to COVID-19 "defective" and demanded that they be revised as they did not provide immediate relief.
He also claimed the Centre did not announce any scheme to help women whose husbands succumbed to the disease. Gehlot was speaking during a video conference on Covid vaccination. On May 29, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a number of welfare measures, including providing financial assistance, for children who lost their parents to COVID-19.
According to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), fixed deposits will be opened in the names of such children, and the PM-CARES fund will contribute through a specially designed scheme to create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each of them. This corpus will be used to give the beneficiaries a monthly stipend from 18 years of age for the next five years. On reaching the age of 23, they will get the corpus amount as one lump-sum for personal and professional use.
Gehlot said the Centre's package did not provide immediate relief, which was of utmost importance, to the children who lost their parents to COVID-19. "The package of the government of India is defective and there is confusion about it. The government will provide financial help after a child reaches the age of 18. Who knows who will be where after 18 years? Package means instant help," he said.
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He added that he would speak to PM Modi about the scheme. The chief minister also alleged that the Centre did not announce any measures to help women who lost their husbands to COVID-19. On the other hand, the Rajasthan government provided immediate relief of Rs 1 lakh to children orphaned and women widowed by the pandemic apart from monthly financial assistance.
The Rajasthan government's scheme provides immediate financial assistance of Rs 1 lakh to such children and widows. In addition to this, children would get Rs 2,500 per month till the age of 18 and Rs 5 lakh once they attain the age of 18 while widows would get a monthly social security pension of Rs 1,500.
Besides the scheme for children, the Centre had announced a string of measures on May 29 to help the families who lost their earning members to the pandemic. These include a pension for dependents of Covid victims and enhanced and liberalised insurance benefits under the Employees' Deposit-Linked Insurance (EDLI) scheme.
During the conference, Gehlot said a section of media published misleading news about the wastage of Covid vaccines in Rajasthan. Recently, a media report claimed that 500 vials of Covid vaccines were found in a dustbin at 35 inoculation centres in the state. Citing the report, the Centre wrote to the Rajasthan government on May 31 saying this was "not acceptable" and must be investigated. Replying to the Centre's letter, state Health Minister Raghu Sharma had said the news report was "false and not based on facts".
Gehlot said vaccine wastage in Rajasthan at that time was around 2 per cent as against the national average of 6 per cent. The wastage has further reduced to 0.8 per cent in the state. "Our health workers were targeted and misleading news was published as part of a campaign, which was unfortunate. How can health workers dump vaccines in the dustbin? The procedure which was followed by them was in accordance with the central government guidelines," he said.
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"Such an unfortunate campaign was run at a time when the public was suffering. It is wrong that vaccines were wasted. Our target is to ensure zero wastage of vaccines," he said. Health Minister Raghu Sharma, Urban Development and Housing Minister Shanti Dhariwal and Assembly Speaker C P Joshi also addressed the conference that was attended by district collectors, sarpanches and other public representatives.
PTI
