Sarthak Kanjilal
Port Blair, Mar 20: The latest trend of outsourcing government hospitals to private NGOs has triggered a fresh controversy in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Islanders are now raising questions whether is it wise to spend crores of rupees for construction hospital buildings and setting up of other health related infrastructure and hand over the same to private parties in name of PPP.
The matter doesn’t end here, for running the already outsourced hospital the Administration will have to pay continuously to private parties for payment of Doctors and Staffs, knowing fully well that there will be hardly any way to check whether the money will be paid fully to the doctors and staffs by the Private Partner.
It’s like opening a grand showroom at heart of the city by the Administration and handing over the same to a private party. The only difference is that in these government hospitals the private party will not be able to charge money from Islanders but it will get enough amount from Administration to run the show.
Possible financial irregularities is not the only thing, which is bothering Islanders, there are other serious issues too.
Talking to Andaman Sheekha the State Secretary of CPI(M) Mr. Chandrachoodan said that the main problem will be quality of service.
“In government hospitals the doctors and staffs are government servant and hence they work with certain amount of devotion and responsibility knowing fully well that in case of any mistake they will be either transferred or punished by the Administration but in case of Private Party, on whom the Administration will fix responsibility in case of a major accident or death due to negligence,” he added.
Smelling rat in this issue Mr. Chandrachoodan added that things may go wrong anytime in PPP mode, especially whenever there is a dispute related to payment. “In case of Suryachakra we have seen that how things can go wrong and the Administration must learn a lesson from this,” he added.
“If the private party is willing to run a hospital, let them open their own hospitals, why there is a need to build massive hospitals for them so that they can earn profit. We never know how much the private party will charge for each doctors and how much money will be actually paid to the doctor,” Mr. Chandrachoodan added.
However, the Health Department has clarified that there are many valid reasons behind outsourcing government hospitals.
“Due to non-availability of doctors in these Islands, we cannot run those hospitals. Doctors, who are appointed don’t want to go to remote Islands on transfer and demand a regular job,” said a top official of Directorate of Health Services, who does not want his name to be quoted.
When asked about ensuring quality of service he said that the Kishori Nagar Hospital in Diglipur is being run by a private party since last one year and DHS is happy with their services.
“We have inspection reports and if anything goes wrong we can say them to leave at any point of time. Moreover, they are not going to charge any money from general public. Funds for 89% day to day consumption is provided by the administration, we provide them all the equipments, infrastructure and etc. The only thing is that the Doctor and staffs are appointed by the NGO, and till now they are really doing a great job,” he clarified.
But there are still many questions, which remained unanswered. Why can’t Administration appoint more permanent doctors? When already the Administration is paying huge amount of money to private party, why can’t DHS run these hospitals? Why there is a need to let a private party to earn profit, out of Tax-Payers’ Hard earned money? How the Administration will ensure quality service? And most importantly if anything goes wrong how the Administration will fix responsibility?
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