By OUR STAFF REPORTER
Rudraprayag, 18 Jan: Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat inaugurated the ‘Atal Ayushman Uttarakhand Scheme’ here on Friday. A total of 5,40,670 golden cards under the scheme have been made. He said that when Prime Minister Narender Modi launched the ‘Ayushman Bharat Yojna’, the first golden card of the country was given to Tara Devi of Rudraprayag district. The scheme was the biggest health scheme in the world and would directly benefit 50 crore poor people belonging to 10 crore families in the country. He claimed that Uttarakhand had become the first state in the country to provide health cover to all its 23 lakh families.
A total of 99 government and 66 private hospitals have been selected to run the scheme. The government hospitals will be given incentives and treatment of 1350 diseases will be covered under the scheme. He hoped that private hospitals would come forward to provide health services in remote and far off areas of the state. The old and children would also be provided free OPD services under the scheme. He announced that dedicated air ambulance services would be started in the state from 26 January. To help the patients, two “Arogya Mitras” would soon be appointed at AIIMS, Rishikesh. ICU services in each district would also be started within a year. On this occasion, the Chief Minister also distributed golden cards to the beneficiaries of the scheme.
Rawat announced that women groups would be provided loans up to Rs 5 lakh at one per cent interest. Similarly, farmers in the state would also be provided interest free loans of Rs 1 lakh, each. Uttarakhand had good human resources and nature had also bestowed many resources. By using these in a better way, the state could progress fast. To involve the locals in self employment, 67 Nyaya Panchayats are being developed as growth centres.
He also claimed that his government had hit hard against corruption in the past 20 months and thousands of crores of rupees had been saved. He said that everyone has to contribute to make Uttarakhand corruption free.
Chief Minister Rawat also inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of 23 developmental projects worth Rs 78.68 crore.
Cabinet Minister Prakash Pant, Rudraprayag MLA Bharat Singh Chaudhary, District President Vijay Kaparwan, District Incharge, BJP, Pt Rajinder Anthwal, District Magistrate Mangesh Ghildyal and SP Ajai Singh were also present on the occasion.
