Sheekha Bureau
Port Blair, May 16: Port Blair city is one of the happy hunting grounds for quack doctors since a long time. Most of these quacks come to Andaman in groups and set up tents in different locations and practice their own version of Ayurveda on residents of these Islands. Among low earning group of people, especially those coming to Andaman for labourer jobs from mainland, these quack doctors are a hit.
Several such tents could be seen these days in different parts of Port Blair, each tents has loud speakers, which advertise for the stalls and claim to treat serious health issues, which most of the small clinics in Andaman, can’t treat.
A board outside one of these stalls, set up at Nayagaon Junction claims various super-specialty abilities of the quack doctor, sitting inside. Outside one can see people coming in bikes throughout the day, mostly drunkards.
These medicine practitioners claim to relying on the knowledge passed on by his family for generations to treat his patients. People who come to these guys usually fall pray, due to lack of knowledge and illiteracy, as these people reportedly either make people deeply scared by informing them deadly health problems or about severe impact of black magic on them. More they can scare more is the income.
These people even claim to cure homosexuality and other sex problems.
Surprisingly the signboards outside these tents openly misuse the name of ‘Ayurveda’ and the Administration do not bother to even question them. It seems that the tents raised by the quacks are only visible to common people and not to officers and law enforcing agencies or health department.
In Andaman for opening a small clinic, even one qualified doctor needs hundreds of permissions but quacks do not need any permission and they can openly exploit public and give them whatever products they want, as medicines.
One cannot rule out possibilities of these Quacks selling drugs to people.
Question is why no one takes action on these people, who put their tents for several weeks on a place? Why Administration is silent on this issue? Why Police and PBMC do evict them as this also a temporary form of encroachment?
