No fake claims of ex gratia for COVID deaths: AP
Government has set up district-level Covid-19 death ascertaining committees with joint collector (Development) as its head in all districts
Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh does not seem to have any fake claims for payment ex gratia of Rs 50,000 by the government as directed by the Supreme Court for each Covid-19 deaths.
The state health authorities say that more than 40,000 claims have been received from the kin of those who died due to Covid19. Out of them, nearly 37,000 claims have been settled by paying the ex-gratia to the kin.
The apex court on Thursday permitted the Centre to probe fake claims for ex gratia in relation to Covid19 deaths by verifying five per cent of claims in four states -- Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala and Gujarat. The court order came following detection of a wide gap between the number of claims received and the number of deaths that were recorded.
Meanwhile, the state health authorities reported the total number of Covid19 deaths in the state so far to be 14,730 as on Thursday.
The authorities said the wide gap between the claims for ex- gratia and registration of Covid19 deaths occurred due to technical reasons. For instance, the SC issued a direction to count the deaths due to Covid19 in case the patient tested Covid positive in an RT-PCR test and died within 30 days. However, the state government counts the Covid19 deaths in such cases wherein a person tested Covid positive and died within the window period of 14 days while undergoing treatment for the Coronavirus infection.
On the other hand, the state government has set up district-level Covid19 death ascertaining committees with joint collector (Development) as its head in all the districts to scrutinise the Covid19 death claims received and remit the ex-gratia amount directly into the bank accounts of eligible beneficiaries through CFMS via the revenue officials.
AP health and family welfare commissioner K Bhaskar said, “We don’t have any fake claims of Covid19 deaths for ex-gratia. If we detected any, we should have taken action.”
On other hand, nearly 85 doctors working in both the public and private sectors in AP died after getting infected with Coronavirus in the state. Of them, 18 government doctors received ex-gratia of Rs 50 lakh under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana while the rest have not received any such relief.
Moreover, no family member among the deceased doctors has got employment on compassionate grounds in the state so far.