Costly liquor destroys poor families in State: TDP leader KS Jawahar

Mangalagiri: TDP leader KS Jawahar on Tuesday held the Jagan Mohan Reddy government responsible for the non-stop death of poor workers after they consumed sanitisers unable to buy liquor at the very high and unaffordable rates.

Jawahar asked whether the huge liquor income was more important than the poor people's lives for the Chief Minister and his party MLAs. It may be mentioned here that two workers died in Vijayawada after consuming sanitisers on Monday. Without any conscience and humanity, the Jagan regime was tearing apart the Mangalsutras of women thereby causing a lot of suffering in the poor families all over the State, he said.

In a statement here, the TDP leader deplored that the Chief Minister spoke of imposing total prohibition in a phased manner but after coming to power, he started looking at liquor as a major source of revenue for the government as well as his party leaders. With the liquor rates increased multiple times, the poor workers were forced to spend all their daily wages on liquor alone. After a day's hard labour, they have developed a weakness for liquor.

Jawahar said that the average worker was now torn between his addiction to drinking and its high rates. He was not able to give up drinking and eventually was forced to consume sanitisers mixed with cold drinks. In Vijayawada city alone, over 10 workers died due to consumption of harmful sanitisers during the lockdown period. Over 50 persons met with untimely death after drinking sanitisers and arrack.

The TDP leader asked whether the government will take responsibility of the families of the workers who died after consuming sanitisers. The Jagan regime was supplying cheap and unhealthy liquor brands for the sake of its huge J-tax collections. Only Jagan's own brands of liquor were being sold in Andhra Pradesh while all sorts of brands were available in Telangana.

Jawahar accused the YSRCP leaders and the volunteers of running a liquor mafia to sell smuggled liquor brought from neighbouring States at very high rates in Andhra Pradesh. It was clear that the Chief Minister had no commitment to his promise on liquor prohibition. Just like many other promises, Jagan has betrayed the people of the State once again. The YSRCP government only interested in increasing its revenue regardless of the loss of people's lives due to high rates of liquor.