Guwahati: Receiving formally the Oxygen Express, which carried four containers with total 80 metric ton of medical oxygen at Amingaon in the city, Assam chief minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allocating additional medical oxygen to the State.
With the arrival of Oxygen Express that started its journey from Jharkhand, Assam feels more comfortable in dealing with the increasing oxygen requirement primarily for the treatment of Covud-19 patients, stated Sarma, who earlier served as the health minister in Sarbananda Sonowal’s cabinet.
Sarma also offered his thanks to Union railway minister Piyush Goyal for taking steps to bring the train to Assam. He informed that from onwards, the concerned train would come twice per week delivering total 160 mt of oxygen to the State.
Apart from fulfilling Assam’s own requirement, the State government in Dispur decided to supply surplus oxygen to neighbouring north-eastern States like Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram
and Tripura.
Meanwhile, at a videoconference address to the district magistrates and district police chiefs, Sarma asked the local authorities to create community surveillance system to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
In view of the increasing number of corona positive cases, Sarma directed the district authorities to put in place the surveillance system to avert the pandemic moving from urban to rural areas. He emphasized on concerted efforts to stop its spread to villages and asked the police to enforce the curfew and total ban on inter-district movement of people. He also ordered the local authorities to look after the corona vaccination process giving priority to the aged people.
In another matter, Sarma asked the State chief secretary to take appropriate steps for incorporating employees from Railway, banks, LPG distribution network, petrol pumps, pharmacies and other sectors that are exempted from the purview of curfew as front line workers to enable them to receive Covid-19 vaccination on priority basis.
