The Madurai bench of the Madras high court has ordered notice to the authorities on a plea to order an enquiry into alleged irregularities in the 108 ambulances service scheme. The bench comprising Justice K N Basha and Justice M Venugopal gave the directive to the principal secretaries of Health and Family Welfare, Transport and Home departments on a petition filed by one A Jeyaprakash Narayanasamy of Thoothukudi.
The petitioner said the state government had in 2007, chalked out a scheme to provide ambulance services to accident victims and for other emergency purposes. The scheme was called TN-EMRI 108 (Tamil Nadu - Emergency Management and Research Institute) ambulance scheme.
The petitioner claimed that though the service was given wide publicity as if it was free, actually crores of rupees was being taken indirectly from the public. A sum of Rs 2,094.50 lakh was collected from the government in 2008-2009 to operate 198 ambulances and in 2009-2010, Rs 4,448.80 lakh was taken to operate 385 ambulances, he claimed. Other than that, they had submitted income tax returns that they claimed were additionally spent to run the operation. Narayanasamy also said the papers from the Tamil Nadu health system project ( TNHSP) did not match with the papers of the TN-EMRI.
The petitioner said the rate of accidents clearly showed that the road safety policy by installing the TN-EMRI 108 was not of any use. People were dying without getting golden hour trauma care despite government spending. TN-EMRI was charging an exorbitant rate as appraised in the report of the Planning Commission, he added.
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