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Covid-19 lockdown: Congress asks Delhi govt to waive off power, water charges
In a 10-point charter of demands, the party also demanded the Delhi government shouldn’t charge school fees from students, and pay salaries to teachers in aided schools and MSME workers.
The Congress on Friday urged Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to waive off fixed power charges and water bills for all establishments that have been closed because of the Covid-19 lockdown.
In a 10-point charter of demands, the party also demanded the Delhi government shouldn’t charge school fees from students, and pay salaries to teachers in aided schools and MSME workers.
Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken insisted that migrants and daily wage workers should be given incentives and the government should proactively take steps to help those in distress in Delhi because of the Covid-19 crisis.
Addressing a news conference through video conference, Maken sought standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be notified for delivery workers in the national capital to stop the spread of the virus through them.
All 89 quarantined people who came in contact with a pizza delivery boy, feared to be infected with the coronavirus, should be immediately tested, he said.
Maken pointed out the delivery boy was sent back by several hospitals without being tested. He said testing should be ramped up in the national capital, and asked if Delhi had entered the community transmission stage since 135 people have been kept under investigation.
Migrants, being the backbone of any city, should immediately be given ₹7,500 a month to help them cope with the crisis and make them feel safe in Delhi and other towns, he added.
Maken also demanded provision of free rations for two months to the poor and vulnerable, advance payment of pensions to senior citizens and widows, and risk allowance to sanitation and frontline health workers.
He also sought an unemployment allowance of ₹5,000 for the unemployed in the national capital.
Maken attacked the Delhi government for giving the go-ahead to private schools to charge one month’s tuition fee and said the state should bear a major part of expenses on the salaries of teachers.
“It is wrong to ask private schools to take a month’s fee. How will the parents pay the fee when there is a lockdown? The Delhi government should pay 75% of expenses borne on teachers’ salaries so that these schools get relief and waive three months’ fees,” added Maken.
Earlier in the day, Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia announced that no private school in the national capital could hike its fees or charge anything from parents other than one month’s tuition fee.
Maken also claimed 55 health workers in Delhi had tested positive for the coronavirus so far.
