Pune lockdown: BJP MLA Shirole says Lockdown is not a remedy
Pune, 11 July 2020: “The graph of building a city’s medical infrastructure should always be higher than the progressive cases of COVID19 infection. Lockdown is not a remedy, it is supposed to be an intervention to give the administration time to better equip and strengthen medical infrastructure”, said Shivajinagar MLA Siddharth Shirole in a series of tweets after the district administration announced lockdown in Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad and neighbouring villages. There will be 10 days strict lockdown from July 14-23.
Shirole tweeted, “It’s been more than 100 days since we had lockdown 1 and it’s unfortunate that even after me raising concerns for weeks now, the state leadership has failed woefully in preparing Pune for this spike in COVID19 infections, forecasted by most epidemiology studies & models.
Pune’s COVID Warriors including our very own Mayor have done a commendable job in helping curtail the spread of the virus. I truly believe that 1000 cases/day for a city the size of Pune is alarming only because of the lack of hospital beds & infrastructure for early treatments.
Enforcing the lockdown to disguise failures of the state government and administration is iniquitous to the citizens of our city who were slowly getting back to normalcy. The LockDown has now become a compulsion, which could have easily been prevented with proactive action.
State Govt has been misleading people with projections & stats of preparedness that are miles away from reality. Pune has one of the highest mortality & infection growth rates in the country, and yet till date doesn’t have real plans for a 10000+ bed COVID Treatment Center.
I fail to understand how the State Government and Administration plan to revamp and rebuild Pune’s medical infrastructure and prepare for future spikes by administering a 10-day lockdown when they have been miserably unsuccessful to do so in the past 100 days.
Leadership that is paramount in times of such crisis is acutely missing. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray stays in our neighbouring city and yet has not made a single visit to Pune in the past 100 days to oversee the preparedness or even encourage the COVID warriors.
Let alone a visit to Pune, CM Thackeray has not had a single update or review call/video conference with elected representatives of the City who are working on the ground during this unprecedented Pandemic. Even emails from me are yet to receive a reply.
My heart goes out to my fellow Punekars who were just learning to live with Covid19 and work towards livelihood. All I can say is that be optimistic, together we will overcome this dark period. In the meanwhile, if you have issues feel free to contact me or my office.”
