Neeraj Rohmetra
Jammu, Mar 21: Concerned over the state of health care facilities and medical institutions of the State, Union Health Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad has shot off several letters to the office of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah seeking his personal intervention for improving the State of affairs.
Reliable sources told EXCELSIOR that the letters have been repeatedly written to the State Government particularly in view of threat of de-recognition looming large over the prestigious Medical Colleges of State due to shortage of faculty in several disciplines.
While advocating enhancement of the age of superannuation of medical faculty, the letter written by the Union Health Minister says, “I had requested you to enhance the age of superannuation of medical faculty in order to ensure the availability of adequate experienced manpower in the existing as well as proposed new disciplines”.
“Enhancement of age will ensure their availability in the existing streams and also enable the State Government to start new M.Ch/DM courses in the newly created Super Speciality Hospitals”, it added.
While referring to the upcoming Super Speciality Hospitals in Jammu and Kashmir, the letter whose copy is in possession of EXCELSIOR says, “Infrastructure and equipment at both new Super Speciality Hospitals are being provided by the Government of India under Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Surakha Yojana (PMSSY). However, the timely completion of these prestigious projects is dependent on the faculty being in position to utilize the state of art facilities”, adding, “the faculty positions, particularly at the senior levels, at both Jammu and Srinagar Speciality Hospitals are yet to be filled up by the State Government”.
The letter further says, “the people of Jammu and Kashmir are eagerly looking forward to the early commissioning of the projects and will, no doubt, immensely benefit from the high quality modern infrastructure and installation of advanced high end equipment”.
“I would like to inform you that the above projects are at the final stages of completion. However, operationalization of these facilities will necessarily require trained and qualified human resources to be in place simultaneously”, says Union Health Minister and former Chief Minister in his letter.
Cautioning over the delay in appointment of qualified human resources, the documents says, “if the process of recruiting qualified faculty in the new Super Speciality Hospitals is delayed, patients will have to continue to travel out of the State to seek treatment for various ailments. The out of pocket expenditure on treatment hugely increases due to the additions of travel and staying costs and further impoverishes sick persons and their families”.
“Therefore, it is of singular importance that urgent steps are taken to fast-track the recruitment of vacant faculty positions in the Super Speciality Hospitals at Jammu and Srinagar”, it added.
Emphasising over the need to increase the age of superannuation, the letter says, “you may kindly recall my earlier letters, in which I had requested you to enhance the age of superannuation of medical faculty in order to ensure the availability of adequate experienced manpower in the existing as well as proposed new disciplines”.
The document further added that the steps taken by other States in amending their norms to confirm with revised Medical Council of India (MCI) Regulations, have also been shared by my Ministry incumbents with the senior officials of the State Government.
“I am sure that you would appreciate the need to quickly take measures to augments the availability of faculty to fully utilize the facilities being created for the people of J&K and personally intervene to ensure that immediate steps are taken to fill up the vacant positions in the newly created Super Speciality Hospitals of Jammu and Srinagar”, the letter concluded.
It may be recalled that on Mar 10, also the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Ghulam Nabi Azad while laying foundation stone of Sant Manjit Singh Institute of Medical Sciences and Research at Jeevan Nagar, Jammu had expressed concern over the failure of the State Government to overcome the shortage of faculty members in the Medical College and take benefit of increase in cap on MBBS seats. However, Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, who was present on the occasion, had opined that increasing retirement age of faculty members was a complex issue and its pros and cons in the context of other Government employees need to be thoroughly discussed before arriving at any decision.
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