Patients suffer as CHC staff boycott work for 2nd day

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, October 28

The striking employees of Raipur Community Health Centre (CHC) continued to boycott work for the second day today. They are protesting the non-payment of pending dues.

The Raipur CHC is being run under public private partnership (PPP) by Rajbhara Medicare. A few days ago, the private partner had written a letter to the Principal Secretary, Health, Om Prakash, demanding payment of dues pending since August 2015. In the letter, the private partner had also stated that the employees had become restless and had threatened to launch a stir.

Dr Anand Shukla, Medical Superintendent, Raipur CHC, said from tomorrow the partner would stop running emergency services. “We will have to look for alternative arrangements because from tomorrow the emergency services too will be stopped. We will be forced to send patients to Dehradun or Nehrugram PHC,” he said.

Today, the OPD remained shut as the striking doctors did not attend to the patients, even though the CMO Dr SP Agarwal had sent doctors from the nearby PHC.

The officials in the Health Department said the terms and conditions in the MoU with the private partner were posing problems and the government was now engaged in reworking the terms and conditions. “An exercise has been launched to rework the entire partnership in the health services so that there is more accountability and the patients’ interest is taken care of,” said Dr RP Bhatt, DG, Health.

Significantly, the services of the private partner had been far from satisfactory and the government had even imposed penalty to bring around the private partner while an investigation is also underway against it.

Rajbhara Medicare is running three more CHCs at Sahiya, Naugaon and Thatur.