leader of Opposition in Punjab Assembly, Charanjit Singh Channi on Saturday said the miserable condition of Government health centres and hospitals not only ridiculed the claims of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal of taking the State to higher orbit of development but it was also part of a big scandal to promote private players at the cost of the Government hospitals.
“Nothing can be more shocking than that the fact that the health care units from dispensaries to primary health centres to once premier institutions like Rajendra Hospital in Patiala have been turned into junk yards in the absence of even basic staff, medicines and other facilities,” he said in a statement issued here.
Channi said “The Badal Government has never bothered to equip health care units even in cancer prone areas. Even where doctors have been posted, they prefer to work on deputation at some convenient place to them although the basic facilities to the patients are not available even in such preferred centres”, he added.
The Congress leader demanded that a high level probe monitored by a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High should be ordered to go into deeper in this scandalous case of willful neglect of the public sector health facilities to promote big private players.
Channi added that the Government has left the primary and secondary health care in the Government sector in lurch, there are no doctors available in the civil dispensaries, no technical staff for the labs, and no special surgeon. The patients are being sent to get the tests done from private players so that the staff gets their commission and it is passed to their political bosses.
Channi said “Badal owed an explanation to the people for this deliberate ruination of the public health care system and bring in big private players”.