NE NEWS SERVICE
PUDUCHERRY, JUNE 12
Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy on Friday said COVID-19 spreads in the Union Territory largely due to the arrival of people from Chennai and other districts of neighbouring Tamil Nadu for health care facilities and other purposes.
In #Puducherry, spread of #COVID19 is increasing. Doctors & all Medical workers should be more careful while treating them.
Incoming of people from Tamilnadu, especially Chennai for medical treatment, marriage functions has been major cause for spread of corona in Puducherry. pic.twitter.com/Ndoe6yWyHw— V.Narayanasamy (@VNarayanasami) June 12, 2020
During a press briefing through video conference, he said although the pandemic has not become a community transmission and occurs more through contact tracing, the flow of people from Chennai and other pockets of TN for marriage functions, medical care has been a major cause of occurrence of the malady here.
Narayanasamy appealed to the people to ensure that they wore masks whenever they stepped out for very essential purposes, practiced hand hygiene and adopted social distancing.
He cautioned people in rural pockets to be extremely careful as coronavirus has been spreading in such areas of Puducherry.
The union territory responded to the lockdown in different phases since March 25 and consequently industrial sector, business establishments, traders and other sections were hit and flow of revenue through GST particularly had come down steeply.
Narayanasamy said he had earlier participated in video conference convened by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and brought to her notice that the flow of revenue had fallen by 18 per cent for the last three months or so due to lockdown.
‘Already the Centre has not paid the compensation arising out of implementation of GST here from March to May,’ the CM claimed and said, ‘Poor financial position was hitting implementation of welfare schemes and footing the salary bill of the staff and payment of pension to various sections.’ Narayanasamy had been insisting that the Centre should come to the rescue of the states and Union Territories with copious assistance during the current situation.
‘The delay in submitting a full fledged budget for the fiscal 2020-2021 here was also largely due to the poor financial position.
We are constrained to knock at the doors of the Reserve Bank of India for a loan to tide over the current perplexing and pathetic fiscal situation,’ he said.
Narayanasamy also charged Lt Governor Kiran Bedi with ‘deliberately’ delaying adherence to the Union Home Ministry’s directions on sharing of financial powers with the elected government.
The Home Ministry had very clearly delineated the financial powers of the Lt Governor, the elected ministry and Secretaries of governments in Puducherry on the same lines as was implemented in New Delhi in 2018, he said.
The Chief Minister accused Bedi of ‘deliberately’ delaying the enforcement of the Centre’s directives and adopting ‘anti people stance’ to cripple the implementation of schemes decided by his government.
He paid tributes to the police personnel, health staff and others for dedicating themselves to protect the people against the pandemic.
