Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Friday alleged a conspiracy was being hatched to stop the Government's "Dilli Ke Farishtey" scheme, under which the government pays the bills of accident victims. He alleged that a few officials had conspired to stop the AAP Government's scheme of providing free treatment to accident victims with payments not being made to private hospitals for nearly a year.
He said that he has written to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to take action against the officials concerned.
"The payments are made to private hospitals at government rates. But for the last one year or so, payments have not been released to private hospitals. There is a conspiracy by certain officers to stop the scheme," he alleged in a press conference.
Revealing another critical piece of information related to this conspiracy, the Health Minister explained that in January 2023, when the Health Department brought to the notice of Deputy CM Manish Sisodia that Delhi government is owed approximately Rs 24.5 crores by private hospitals in Delhi, the Deputy CM wrote a letter to the Director-General of Health Services (DGHS) on January 24, 2023, asking for information about when these outstanding dues would be paid.
He requested that a timeline be provided to him. Surprisingly, no response was given to the Deputy CM.
As soon as he received information about this, he called a meeting on April 21, 2023, concerning this matter. Both the Health Secretary and DGHS, Mr. Nutan Mundeja, were present at this meeting. Shockingly, when he asked the officials in the meeting how much money private hospitals and laboratories owed by the Delhi government, he was officially told that no dues were pending, and all details are there in the minutes of the meeting.
A few days after this meeting, representatives of some private hospitals came to him and disclosed that the Delhi government owed crores of rupees to several private hospitals.
Upon receiving this information, he instructed Health Secretary Dr. S.B. Deepak Kumar to issue a show-cause notice to DGHS and inquire into the reasons for the incorrect information provided regarding the outstanding payments to private hospitals.
