Chandigarh, May 6 (PTI) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday urged Congress MPs from the state to put pressure on the Centre to augment supplies of oxygen, vaccines and vital medicines to help the state government effectively fight the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chief minister alleged that Punjab was being meted out step-motherly treatment by the Centre in the matter of supplies needed urgently to battle coronavirus.

He exhorted the MPs to push Government of India to enhance the state's quota of oxygen and dispatch additional tankers on priority to enable lifting of the full allocated quota of 195 metric tonne on a daily basis, according to a government statement.

Singh claimed that BJP-ruled neighbouring Haryana had got a bigger oxygen quota and more tankers than Punjab.

The MPs from both houses also expressed concern over the issue and promised to utilize their MPLAD funds to set up oxygen generation plants in government hospitals.

Besides shortage of oxygen, vaccines and medicines, the state was facing issues even on the ventilators front, since there was no state–run Bharat Electronics Limited engineer to install 108 of the 809 ventilators received from Government of India, said the chief minister.

Singh told the MPs that despite the state's repeated pleas and his personal letters to the prime minister and the home minister for increasing the state's oxygen quota by 50 MT, Punjab was still struggling with insufficient oxygen supply.

The 195 MT quota that was allocated was inadequate to meet the state's present needs, and even that could not be completely lifted due to shortage of tankers, he said.

The state is currently facing a backlog of 120 MT from nearby sources (Dehradun, Panipat, Roorkee).

On the vaccination front, the MPs expressed concern over the low supplies and "repeated delays" from Government of India.

The chief minster said the state government was continuously engaging with both, the central government and the Serum Institute of India, to expedite availability.

The Centre's apathy towards Punjab was also reflected in the fact that many other states had been given more vials of Tocilizumab, whose import and distribution was controlled by the Centre, claimed the chief minister.

The state had sought 650 vials but was given only 200 in the initial stages, which were distributed to government and private hospitals, he added.

Even Remdesivir continued to be in short supply as delivery of the 50,000 vials allocated to the state was extremely slow, he said.

In spite of repeated requests, Government of India institutions such as IISER, Mohali never gave support in COVID testing, said the CM, adding that even AIIMS, Bathinda has not been able to provide any critical COVID care.

PGI, which was set up as the main referral hospital for the region, was mostly refusing to take patients referred from Punjab (even though walk-in patients were being taken), and was even conducting fewer tests than Punjab colleges, he said.

The MPs expressed concern over the CM's disclosure that genome sequence results had not been received for the past one month.

On the issue of phased reopening of shops from Friday, he told the MPs that DCs and SSPs had been asked to work out arrangements after taking stakeholders into confidence.

Those who attended the meeting included MP (Patiala) Preneet Kaur, MP (Ludhiana) Ravneet Singh Bittu, Rajya Sabha MPs Pratap Singh Bajwa and Shamsher Singh Dullo and PPCC president Sunil Jakhar.

(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)