How fresh ambulances worth Rs 10 cr decayed in Omar’s, Mufti’s Govt

Director Health Kashmir procured 125 ambulances out of NRHM funds but these were left unutilised for 14 months even as patients died on way and hospitals craved for vehicles

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

______

SRINAGAR, Jun 30: Hours before Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s maiden visit to Budgam’s Aga Syed Yousuf Memorial District Hospital on June 10, security barricades kept a part of the district headquarters out of bounds for ordinary civilians. A poor couple from Bugchhulla village carried a 9-month-old baby for treatment. Entry was denied by Police and security columns towards the hospital. Some Good Samaritans tried to call an ambulance but they were told ‘we have none’. By the time, CM concluded his visit, the infant was dead. Drivers at the hospital collected an amount of Rs 800 by donation and sent the body by a hired Tata Sumo back to the mother’s parental home at Nengarpora, Khansahab.

There are 8 drivers but only three ambulances at Budgam’s District Hospital (DH). A well-equipped Mobile Medical Unit [JK01K-4881], which the drivers wrongly call ‘critical care ambulance’, has been lying defunct on the premises ever since one each of such was procured under the initiative of then Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma in 2009-10 for all district hospitals. Its ECG and other equipment have disappeared. “It hasn’t been utilised and has become non-functional over the years”, says Dr G.M. Dar who was brought in recently---first as MS and then as Chief Medical Officer (CMO).

Out of the three ‘workable’ ambulances, the best one [Eeco JK04B-8226] has been reserved by the new MS Dr Gazala Tabbasum for her personal use. She travels by it daily from and back to her Pirbagh residence.

In CMO’s own residential block of Soibug, there are four drivers and no ambulance. A dilapidated van runs as ambulance for Sub District Hospital [SDH] Soibug and its ancillary Public Health Centres [PHCs] of Wadwan and Wahabpora.

For Budgam district’s one DH, 9 SDHs, 40 PHCs, 30 ante-PHCs and 141 Sub Centres, there are total of 51 ambulances. Drivers, patients and attendants---even doctors off-the-record---insist that the requirement is over 100. However, Dr Dar maintained that the district had a shortfall of 19 ambulances.

This is just a sample. All other districts in Kashmir have the same story: somewhere only drivers, somewhere only ambulances, somewhere neither. With the Medical Officers, CMOs and Medical Superintendents crying for ambulances, nobody moved in the three successive regimes of Omar Abdullah, Governor N.N. Vohra and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the last around two years. “Neither Sham Lal Sharma (former Health Minister) nor Saleem-ur-Rehman (who has been unceremoniously removed by Mufti’s government earlier this month and replaced by Dr Sumir Matoo) felt accountable to anybody. Ex-CM’s Political Secretary Tanvir Sadiq had to make a hundred calls to secure one ambulance for an area in Srinagar”, said an insider.

Well placed official sources in Health & Medical Education Department revealed to STATE TIMES that in 2013-14, Government of India-funded National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) provided an amount of Rs 15.30 cr to Directorates of Health Services in Kashmir and Jammu for total replacement of the old Eicher ambulances by the upgraded Force Traveller [FT]. It was decided to procure 125 FT ambulances [(9+D) 3350 mm wheel base with cold start device upto minus 8 degree Celsius) for Kashmir and 75 for Jammu.

After a process by the facilitator State Motor Garage (SMG), supply order was placed with Force Motors Ltd which sent the requisitioned consignments through its Jammu-based dealer Republic Motors. On May 29, 2014, Director SMG, G A Sofi, informed DHS Kashmir and Jammu to lift the ordered supplies. At the rate of Rs 7,65,439 each vehicle, payment of Rs 15,30,87800 was released for procurement of the 200 Force Traveller ambulances through SMG.

Even as all the 75 ambulances for Jammu division were lifted on time and distributed among different hospitals, DHS Kashmir did not respondent to Director SMG’s May 29, 2014, communication for several months. A high level committee headed by Commissioner-Secretary Health and Medical Education, which had a number of senior officials as members, failed to act.

The SMG officials revealed that the ambulances for Kashmir started arriving in earlier this year and these were parked at different places---Provincial Medical Store Barzullah, State Health Transport Organisation (SHTO) Bemina, Kashmir Nursing Home Sonwar etc. As the Medical Officers kept begging for the vehicles, the ambulances kept decaying under the vagaries of weather. Though the warranty stands for three years, officials revealed that failure to maintain a schedule of preliminary operation and servicing renders the warranty void.

The first movement was witnessed last week only when the SHTO authorities decided to shift the idle ambulance fleets due to the fresh flood threat to safer places, including PHC Ompora Budgam, where STATE TIMES captured 10 of them on camera on Tuesday. Last fortnight over 50 of these were found decaying at Barzulla.

Sources said it was only after Saleem-ur-Rehman’s attachment that the process of distributing the decaying brand new ambulances started.

The incumbent DHS Kashmir, Dr Sumir Matoo, said that the ambulances were currently being supplied to different hospitals. He said that he would be able to speak on this subject only after Wednesday’s district development board meeting. Sources insisted that just 10 to 20 ambulances had been distributed in June.

Deputy Director Headquarters at DHS Kashmir Dr Abdul Kareem, who is also holding the charge of SHTO, said: “The Honourable Minister and Director had to take a call. It was their responsibility to provide the fleet to the needy hospitals. My role was limited to obeying their orders”. He admitted that over 100 brand new ambulances were left unnecessarily unutilized for about a year and were not supplied to the requisitioning units. Asked why, Dr Kareem said: “First there were floods, then elections and Moral Code of Conduct, then change of regime, then transfer of Director”.

Official sources dismissed all these reasons as “lame excuses”. They said that in any other Indian State, Police would be forced to file criminal cases against the delinquent officials whose carelessness and non-accountability made hundreds of patients die before reaching hospital for want of an ambulance.

Mission Director NRHM Dr Yashpal Sharma told STATE TIMES that “according to my information” all these ambulances had been provided to the hospitals except 25 each in Kashmir and Jammu which had been kept for “upgradation to critical care ambulances”. When Dr Kareem’s admission was pointed out to him, Dr Sharma said, “Then the Director Health has provided wrong information to the administrative Secretary”. H&ME sources asserted that it was a known practice in the department that the senior officers and Minister incharge keep a reserve of the vehicles and ambulances. “They keep it for obliging certain Ministers, MLAs and MPs. It helps builds up their PR and helps them remain in the good books of the powers that be”, said a senior officer.

[To be continued tomorrow]

END