Team Herald
PANJIM/MARGAO: The Congress and former minister Francisco Xavier alias Mickky Pacheco on Friday demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant for failing to provide health care facilities in the State during the times when COVID-19 outbreak has hit the country.
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In a press statement issued, Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Girish Chodankar also questioned why CM violated the guidelines of the centre to keep shops of essential commodities open, which is a part of central government’s guidelines.
“The Chief Minister should immediately resign, failing which the Governor Satya Pal Malik should dismiss him for playing with the lives of the people and take all powers under him,” he said.
Chodankar pointed out that there are clear guidelines from Union Home Ministry to keep the essential commodities shops open.
“The Chief Minister should explain who gave him powers to sideline the Home Ministry guidelines? The Chief Minister of the state is not above the Prime Minister of the country. Pramod Sawant should also explain whether he had any vested interest in keeping the shops closed,” he said.
Chodankar said that it is unfortunate that Pramod Sawant does not know the importance of milk to infants and small children. “He has shown complete insensitivity towards senior citizens and elderly people and daily wage workers,” he added.
The Congress leader also said that the Government has shown complete apathy towards starting testing facility in Goa for last 85 days despite the Opposition demanding the same since the start of the crisis. “They have failed to create isolated quarantine centres till date despite our demand to keep isolated patients away from GMC,” he said.
In a press release issued in Margao, Mickky said that Dr Sawant overruled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s direction of 21-day lockdown by announcing that shops would be open on Friday in Goa thereby defeating the very purpose of social distancing.
He said the health department has totally collapsed in Goa and pointed out that one of the person who tested positive for Covid 19 was actually discharged from Goa Medical College even before this test result was received.
“After the result came in stating that he was positive, GMC did not even send an ambulance to pick him up but asked him to come to the hospital thereby exposing the person bringing him to the hospital to the virus,” said Mickky.
He said the government should have made arrangements to provide essential commodities to the people which it has failed to do so and pointed out that since the government has issued the licenses and permissions it knows exactly how many general stores, super markets and should have asked them to provide the commodities to the people.
“Wherever there are two stores close by, police could be deployed there to ensure that there is no crowding by the purchasers and the stores could give the provisions to the people,” he said.
He said if there is an outbreak of Corona Virus in Goa due to this relaxation then the government and the chief minister in particular would be held responsible for it and therefore said that Dr Pramod Sawant should resign as the chief minister of Goa as he has failed to protect Goans from this virus.
