Kejriwal wants LG’S intervention to fill VACANCIES in govt hospitals
NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote a letter to Lieutenant Governor of Anil Baijal asking him to immediately fill the vacancies in the hospitals as the staff crunch in the Delhi government hospitals at every level has slowed down the process of giving proper medical facilities to the citizens, said government sources.
According to the sources, the CM noted in the letter that staff crunch is there at all the levels such as administration, doctors, paramedics, non-technical and grade four employees. In the past few months, the CM along with Health Minister Satyendar Jain have visited various government hospitals and noted the condition which led to this initiative.
Kejriwal has raised the issue to LG several times earlier but nothing happened, said the sources. Earlier, in his letter, highlighted the ongoing crisis of staff shortage in hospitals — a situation “where we have ventilators but no staff to operate them, machines (like X-ray, CT Scan, MRI) but no staff to run them”.
He urged the LG, who is in charge of services, to take “urgent” steps to fill the vacant posts while “appreciating that with best efforts”, the hiring process would still take a “few months”. The hospitals, he said, can't be allowed “to work without staff even for a day”. As a result, in August 2017, the government had decided that medical superintendents should “fill up vacant posts immediately by hiring experts from outside on contract basis” until hiring took place. The chief secretary was asked to seek the LG'S approval.
Then controversy occurred when the CM asked for the file pertaining to the staff shortage at government hospitals, senior officers “refused” and said they had been “instructed” by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal “not to show this file to any minister, including the CM”. The file pertains to “emergency purchase powers” of medical superintendents in government hospitals, wherein the MS will have the power to purchase material worth Rs 1 crore without prior permission from the state government and hire experts, in lieu of vacancies, on a contractual basis.
Recently, LG Baijal raised objections to the AAP dispensation's ambitious scheme proposing free medical surgeries and tests at private hospitals in case of delay in government facilities. The scheme was passed by the Cabinet on December 12 and was subsequently sent to the Lieutenant Governor for approval.
It has been proposed that if the date for a surgery is not given by a government hospital to a patient within a month, then he can get it done from any of the private hospitals empanelled for this purpose.