Govt teachers rarely prefer public hospitals

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, April 25

In the backdrop of persistent protests to demand regular jobs from the government, especially by teachers, a practice that stands in contrast is that most of the government school educationists don’t believe in government health services for treatment.

The reimbursement of medical bills to the teachers by the Education Department reveals that the high cost of treatment at private hospitals is not a deterrent due to easy repayment of medical bills to the employees from the government coffer.

In the last three months, over 90 teachers in government schools in the state got reimbursement of their medical bills amounting to over Rs 2 crore.

There are few cases in which ailing employees in the Education Department got their treatment from government hospitals.

They prefer big private hospitals such as Fortis, Max, DMC and others.

Most of the times, it is the retired employees who prefer PGIMER, Chandigarh, revealed the evaluation of the medical reimbursement bills.

The reimbursement bills of patients treated at PGI was from Rs 2,136 to Rs 15,152.

While it is said that public hospitals are not preferred due to poor quality of service, another reason for preferring private hospital is easy reimbursement of their treatment cost, sources in the department said.

Special telecast of lectures

To make more and more government schools students aware of various scholarship and welfare schemes, the Education Department has started special telecast of lectures for all students from Class VI to XII.

The initial lecture will be telecast on April 28 through Edusat.

Students are imparted lessons on computers under Edusat, the first satellite-based educational programme at government schools in remote and rural locations.

The Education Department has directed all district education officers to ask all schools to make the students attend these lectures in computer classrooms.

Earlier this month, the department had asked the schools to embark on a special campaign to give the benefit of various Centre and state sponsored pre-matric scholarship schemes to the students of government and private schools.

In a letter to all school heads, the department and circle education officers and the director, had reprimanded the government and private schools for not taking due interest in helping students in getting the benefit of various scholarships.

In the absence of information about the scholarships, most of the eligible students are deprived of these Central and state government schemes.

Besides displaying information about these scholarships prominently on notice boards at the schools, the class teachers should also encourage the eligible students to get maximum benefit of these schemes, demanded the director.