The problems of management of Raipur Community Health Centre (CHC) here seems to be compounding with the hospital staff going on strike on the issue of nonpayment of pending salaries on Tuesday. The hospital which is being operated under Public Private Partnership (PPP) by Rajbhara Medicare private limited is already running into rough weather as it is facing an inquiry of embezzling government funds.
The agitating staff of the hospital is alleging that the management of the hospital has not paid their salary for the last two months. They threw the Out Patient Department (OPD) services of the hospital out of gear. The hospital has an OPD of 200-250 patients daily. The Medical Superintendent of the hospital Dr M K Joshi said that the emergency services however were not affected and they continued to function normally. He said that the admitted patients too were normally served by the staff. Joshi said that the hospital management has assured that the pending salaries would soon be disbursed. He said that the staff is expected to resume their normal duties on Wednesday.
It is pertinent to mention here that the state government on the complaint of the then Chief Medical Superintendent (CMS) Dr Naresh Napalchayal had ordered an inquiry to into the alleged financial irregularities of the hospital. The three member committee headed by Assistant Chief Medical Officer (ACMO), Dr D K Chakrapani is conducting the inquiry and it is expected to submit its report soon. The committee has submitted its preliminary report in the matter. Interestingly the members of the committee had complained that the Rajbhara Medicare private limited had threatened them of dire consequences if anything objectionable is revealed in the inquiry report.
The private player is allegedly involved for burdening the state government and charging it for unnecessary pathological and other tests of Below Poverty line (BPl) patients and pregnant women. It is alleged that such patients did not object when multiple and unnecessary tests were performed on them as they do not have to pay anything for the pathological tests because the state government reimburses the amount of these tests to the private player as per the memorandum of understanding (MoU) of Private Public Participation (PPP) model.