Brash police, slippage in flood relief dent Kerala COVID-19 efforts
Opposition questions deal with US firm, delay in helping people affected by flood
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala’s competent handling of the coronavirus outbreak has caught the attention of India’s federal government and won praise from as far away as the Washington Post, but slippages on multiple fronts at home are denting the state’s good governance image.
Police high-handedness against the common man on multiple occasions has caught the government in a bind, and questions are being raised about the inordinate delay in utilising funds garnered for the 2018 and 2019 floods in the state.
Additionally, the Congress-led opposition is questioning the rationale behind permitting US-based company, Sprinklr to collect data from people vulnerable to coronavirus and store it in the firm’s servers in the US.
Brash police
Last month, when an Indian Police Service officer Yatish Chandra made a few people who violated the lockdown to do sit-ups in public, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself had condemned the incident, saying it “went against the image of the state”.
But similar incidents have cropped up to the consternation of the chief minister who handles the home portfolio.
On Wednesday, police in Punalur in the south of the state were accused of preventing an autorickshaw driver Roymon George to drive up to the local hospital to take home his 88-year-old father P.G. George who was discharged from the hospital. In the hot summer sun, Roymon then carried his father nearly half a kilometre to the vehicle, accompanied by his mother Leelamma.
In another incident in Punalur, a young couple, Punnala Biju and Viji who were taking their four-month-old child with breathing difficulty to hospital, had their vehicle diverted to the police station. The couple alleged they were made to wait for six hours before the vehicle was released.
The high-handedness of the police comes at a time when the state police force is undertaking a number of good initiatives to implement the lockdown in the state.
Questions on flood relief
Indian Union Muslim League MLA K.M. Shaji accused the state government of delay in utilising funds received for flood relief, and also diversion of the amount.
Shaji said the Chief Minister’s Disaster Relief Fund (CMDRF) had received Rs 80 billion (Dh3.8 billion) for immediate relief and that much of the fund had yet to be utilised while people who were patiently awaiting succour were committing suicide.
“The public contributed to the CMDRF not to reimburse the fees of advocates appearing for the chief minister’s partymen facing trial in murder cases”, Shaji said.
IUML parliamentarian P.K. Kunhalikutty said “just because the government is presently handling a pandemic, it should not think that no criticism should be directed at it”.
Row over Sprinklr deal
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala accused the chief minister of facilitating US-based firm Sprinklr to exploit personal health information of thousands of Keralites for profit.
The chief minister had said that the firm had been hired on a no-cost-to-government basis, but Chennithala said the value of the health data of nearly 175,000 Keralites was worth Rs 2 billion and when the company’s assignment was completed, it would benefit from data worth Rs 7 billion.
The Opposition leader’s allegation is that Vijayan used his influence to permit the deal which gives pecuniary advantage to Sprinklr, and that the deal lacked any clause to protect the health data of citizens.
The chief minister dismissed the allegation as “false”, and told the media that the IT department would provide details on the agreement.