Complimenting the newly appointed Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, the ASSOCHAM Secretary General DS Rawat said ASSOCHAM would also encourage inflow of fresh private investments, spur job creation, promote the industrial sector and lead to speedy economic growth.
ASSOCHAM Secretary General was here to meet the new Chief Minister of Uttarakhand and revealed the ASSOCHAM latest available data which indicates that State has consistently performed better in the recent past. The State domestic product has achieved a 12.4% CAGR between 2004-05 and 2012-13. Industry and services segments of the State economy recorded 16.7 per cent and 13.1 per cent growth respectively during the eight years to March 2013. However, agriculture growth during this period was a mere 2.6 per cent.
In this backdrop and keeping in view the development needs of the State, improving the health care services and creating sustainable income generation opportunities are the two key challenges to the Government in Uttarakhand. Given the demography of the State and in view of the physical and social environment, meeting these challenges certainly need innovative approaches.
Sparse and erratic health services especially, acute shortage of women health care facilities have been affecting the state. Though the State alone allocates more than Rs 1,200 crore annually for health, owing to mainly the systemic operational inefficiencies the intended result remains elusive.
In fact, the Government has bigger network and qualitatively better skilled personnel. However, citizens find the Government system ‘unfriendly’ and unsympathetic. It does not respect the users’ needs for dignified and respectful treatment. This has been driving the people in remote areas to unqualified medical practitioners.
The situation demands for a transparent system of incentives/disincentives. Each institution, branch and individual functionaries must be made aware of their responsibilities. Evaluation at regular intervals needs to be conducted with citizen satisfaction as the criteria. Given that transportation is a severe bottleneck in Uttarakhand, to provide better access of health care services in the remotest areas, the concept of mobile health centre and mobile operation theatre facility must be strengthened. Thus, the challenge is how to make the system responsible and stop the situation from getting bad to worse.