Yet another ambitious Government programme for the wellbeing of the poor is destined to take more than declared time to come into existence.
The deadline of 45-days that none other than CM Raghubar Das had himself set on June 6 announcing free dialysis units at eight district health centres has passed last week itself. But none of the district health centres have got even a single dialysis unit installed at its premise yet.
Not only DCDC, the company with which a contract was done to get these units established has cited ‘some’ reasons for not installing these units, but Government officials also appeared ‘satisfied’ with the speed this project was progressing in.
Director of Deep Chand Dialysis Centre (DCDC) Health Services Pvt. ltd., a Delhi based private company, Akshat Garg denied about any deadline for the project at first place.
“We have not been given 45 days deadline anywhere. We have been only said to complete installation of dialysis units across the state in 6 months. We strongly believe that the project will be completed well within time,” said Garg.
At the other hand, Government officials appeared quite satisfied with progress of the project.Chief Director (Health) Dr Praveen Chandra said, “Dialysis units are to be imported, hence the process is taking time.”
He also denied about any deadline. Going one step further, Bokaro ACMO OP Arya didn’t even hesitate to declare himself being unaware about any development in his district health centre.
“I don’t know if any dialysis unit has been installed in Bokaro district health centre. It may be, it may not be. I don’t know,” said Arya.
But delay in installation has resulted in utter disappointment to those in Bokaro, Chaibasa, Dhanbad, Gumla, Palamu, Hajzaribag and two other districts who can’t afford costly dialysis twice or thrice a week and are waiting patiently for these units to be installed at their nearest district health centres as soon as possible.
As per announcement, 8 district hospitals were to be equipped with 5 dialysis units each under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode with DCDC, where dialysis facilities were to be given absolutely free to all Below Poverty line (BPl) card holders.CM had set a deadline of 45 days to install dialysis units at 8 district health centres in first phase. Others were to be charged nominal fees by the company which was given permission to install these units.