Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday announced that the oxygen plant at Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) could be made operational in three months with an amount of Rs 1 billion.
The chief minister during his meeting with renowned doctors in the province for devising a strategy on COVID situation said that the provincial government will look into the oxygen plant.
“We are ready to spend Rs1 billion for making the Steel Mill oxygen plant operational,” he said adding that with rising COVID cases, the country especially the province would need oxygen supplies.
The CM said during the meeting that improving oxygen supplies would help them in ensuring proper treatment to critical patients, whose lives could be at far more risk if shifted to ventilators.
Shah said that meeting with leading doctors was aimed at seeking guidance and assistance from them to tackle the rising virus cases.
“We will be providing cold chains and vaccines to the hospitals so that people could be vaccinated on large scale,” he said.
Sharing alarming COVID trends in the province, the chief minister said that the positivity ratio has reached 18.02 percent in Hyderabad, followed by 12.87 percent in Karachi and 6.85 percent in Sukkur.
It is to note that Senate’s former chairman Raza Rabbani demanded the federal government for reactivating the oxygen plant of Pakistan Steel Mills which was shutdown in 2015 and to reinstate 40 engineers of the plant to make it functional.
“The majority of the 40 engineers and workers, working at the oxygen plant, were removed, they should be immediately reinstated so that the plant can be made functional within one week on war footing,” he said Monday while demanding to make the closed oxygen plant of PSM operational.
He said if this plant is operationalised immediately, it can meet the oxygen demand of the entire country and can ease the pressure on the hospitals that are asking for more oxygen supply.
