Shocking though it may sound to many, a Recorder news report appearing last Wednesday, has pointed to Sindh government's decision to withdraw the free medical facility available to patients at government hospitals. What's more, hint has also been dropped of introduction of "user charges", making it obligatory for patients to pay for medical examination.
As for the cause of such an unpopular decision, it has been traced to incapability of the popularly elected government to take care of every patient due to severe scarcity of funds. However, it will mean hardly any consolation to the people in large numbers ailing from one affliction or the other, the poor, in particular, that these charges will be mobilised for services rendered, such as use of ambulance, CT Scan, MRI, X-Ray, Ultrasound and other pathological facilities.
Needless to point out, from all available indications, the government, which owes its existence to the unqualified support of impoverished masses, will appear as having no qualms in making a decision detrimental to the interests of very people who voted them to power. Moreover, perplexing, in its own way, is the compulsion of the government to resort to such a disgusting levy.
For, it has been contented that the Health Department is faced with constraints, such as belated delivery of budgetary allocations from provincial finance department. Dilating upon the problem, it has been maintained that while budgetary preparations begin in February every year and announced in July, delivery of the budgeted amount takes another three to four months.
As such, the money thus collected would help run the government health institutions unencumbered during three to four months. That the government stands firm in enforcing its decision will leave little to doubt from assignment of the task of quantifying the charges has been assigned to experts and Medical Superintendents of Civil Hospital Karachi, Liaquat University Hospital Hyderabad, Chandka Medical College Larkana and People's Medical College Nawabshah, who were scheduled to hold a meeting, chaired by Special Secretary Health Department.
Again, arguably, to justify such a harsh measure, it has been stated that 35 percent of the collected amount would be deposited in government treasury, another 35 percent for maintenance of machines and hospitals, and the remaining 30 percent for providing facilities, to stop exploitation of government resources, or whatever it may actually mean.
Be that as it may, it will be recalled that in a message of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto as read out on one befitting occasion, making a pointed reference to the importance of election, she had unequivocally declared that it provided the people with an opportunity to rise to the occasion so as to save the nation from a sea of storms, where the plight of the people worsens as unemployment rises, inflation breaks the back of the common citizen, education and health budgets are cut and people allowed to die of hepatitis and dengue fever through neglect of social services.
The people convincingly turned the tide. Now it is up to the government to rise to the occasion and fulfil its obligation. Time has certainly for it effectively to deal with inefficiency, so as to assuage the sad plight of the poverty-stricken people.