Bihar police body demands Rs 50L health cover for every cop

Patna, April 28 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Bihar Police Association (BPA) has written to DGP S.K. Singhal to provide health cover of Rs 50 lakh to each cop in the state.

Mritunjay Kumar Singh, the president of BPA, told IANS that a large number of police personnel are getting infected while performing Covid duty every day.

"It is extremely disheartening that the health department is not providing timely test reports. The report of every RT-PCR test has to come within 48 hours as per the WHO guidelines, but as the health infrastructure has completely collapsed in the state, it is taking 5 to 7 days and sometimes even more than a week. Till then, a person waiting for a test report in home isolation may get severely infected and could even die," Singh said.

"So far, three policemen have lost their lives in the absence of treatment facilities in Bihar. Being frontline Corona warriors, the cops on the ground are facing a serious threat of the infection. Hence, we have written a letter to DGP S.K. Singhal to provide health insurance of Rs 50 lakh to every police personnel and officers who are risking their lives to save the people," he said.

"The infected police personnel are struggling to get hospital beds just like the common people. We have a police hospital in Patna and we have demanded the state government to declare it as a dedicated Covid hospital for police personnel. Unfortunately, there is no headway in it. The maintenance of the hospital is in pathetic condition," Singh said.

"When the first wave of Covid-19 had hit the state last year, we had written a letter to then DGP Gupteshwar Pandey for the same. But even after one year, the department has not implemented it. Hence we have given a reminder to current DGP Singhal to provide Rs 50 lakh insurance to every cop in Bihar. Majority of the cops at the junior level do not have the capacity to bear the high expences of hospitalisation.

Source: IANS