Chandigarh, May 13 (PTI) Opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday demanded a special session of Punjab Assembly to be convened at the earliest in the wake of a surge in COVID cases in the state.

Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema said discussions in the assembly session will help in charting out a plan to formulate strategy to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Cheema alleged that the health facilities in Punjab are in poor condition and sought a 25 per cent increase in the annual budget for health services.

“Due to the growing influence of COVID, the number of coronavirus patients in Punjab is increasing day by day,” said Cheema in a statement here.

He said there were more than 4.5 lakh COVID patients in the state and the death toll had reached 11,000, much higher than the national average, which was a matter of great concern.

Cheema said that although the government had stopped the students from coming to schools due to the pandemic, it was unfair to force the teachers to come to school.

"Therefore, all teachers should be stopped from coming to the school and orders should be given to teach from their homes with online systems," he said.

He said that the government hospitals were facing shortage of doctors, nurses, paramedical staff as well as life saving equipment, oxygen and medicines, whereas the government should have learned from last year's COVID outbreak and made better arrangements in advance to combat the pandemic.

Cheema said that the budget of the Punjab government for health facilities was "very meager" and it should be increased so that the lives of the people could be saved by providing good health services in the hospitals.

Meanwhile, AAP MLA and state Kisan Wing President Kultar Singh Sandhwan said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government were playing politics on the faulty ventilators purchased through PM CARES Fund while the people of the state were dying in large numbers.

Sandhwan said that the deaths of COVID patients in Punjab were due to the non-availability of ventilators.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)