Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, August 14: Lambasting the Akali Dal-BJP government in the state for neglecting the health of the people, especially in border areas where people suffering from even chronic diseases were not being cared for, including in the Jalalabad Assembly constituency represented by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, People’s Party of Punjab chief Manpreet Singh Badal reminded the rulers that providing health facilities was one of the basic duties of any government, especially to the sections to whom expensive treatment was inaccessible.
“What is all the more alarming is that the rulers have turned not just indifferent but immune to the sufferings of the people. That four posts of specialists should be lying vacant in Jalalabad hospital is nothing but indictment of Sukhbir Badal himself who does find time to attend to those affairs of the state in which he himself is not interested. The basic problem in Punjab is the clash of interests of the ruling first family and the casualty are the common people who continue to suffer at every level”, he added.
He said the irony was that Health Minister Surjit Kumar Jayani too belonged to Fazilka area of which this belt in which people suffer from serious ailments was a part.
He said the state government could take the plea that the doctors were not keen to serve in the border belt but the problem was that even in case of modern eye hospital in Ferozepur which had been constructed with central funds, the posts of specialist doctors were lying vacant for about a year.
He proposed that instead of recruiting doctors at paltry sum of Rs 15000 per month, the state government should come out with some incentives to the staff willing to work in remote areas as the situation was same even in rest of the state.
He demanded immediate health care especially for chronically ill children and destitute. He said most of the people having virtually no access to modern health facilities were from the lower strata whose welfare was the responsibility of the state.
