April 26 2021 The recent outbreak in India has led to a shortage of oxygen resources and accelerated the construction of oxygen production plants to increase supply.
However, plans to build a plant in Delhi, India, have been repeatedly delayed, with central and local governments each insisting that the other side is blocking construction.
India’s central government source said plans to build eight PSA oxygen production plants in Delhi have been delayed by the government’s non-licensing, the ANI news agency said Tuesday. Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal on the 25th responded that this is a “clear error” of the statement, and Delhi so far only one plant has started operations.
“Unfortunately, at a time when the Delhi government is actively working with the central government to fill the oxygen supply gap, the central government has made this apparently false statement to cover up its major failure to build a plant in Delhi.” Kejriwal said.
The Delhi government said it had long known that the central government had decided in October 2020 to build 162 PSA plants across the country and published a tender in the same month, “which should have been set up by the Ministry of Health using the Prime Minister’s Aid Fund, but the state governments did not receive a penny and the plants should have been completed and delivered by December 2020”.
Delhi’s government also said the central government had awarded a contract to build 140 of the plants to the same contractor, but the contractor had since “run away”.
At present, India has increased the number of cases by more than 300,000 for four consecutive days. The rapidly worsening outbreak has led to a shortage of medical resources, strained hospital beds across India and a collapse of the health care system.
