The
state and central governments are slow by slow washing their hands off in
public health and education. These two sectors are very important as far as the
well being of common people are concerned. If any state wants to pose as a
welfare state in the real sense of the term it can be seen only in the quantum
of allotment it makes for these two sectors. Because of the indifferent and
apathetic attitude of the governments in the fields of health and education private
entries into them are becoming rampant in the recent past.
In
order to reduce their expenditure on the score of public health more than 13
states in our country have started implementing 108 ambulance services for which
the ambulance and other equipments are provided by loans availed from
International Financial Agencies like World Bank and IMF. Signing a memorandum
of understanding with private companies such as GVK groups which are used to
run concerns only with profit motive to run this service where high sense of
service mindedness is an essential pre requisite the governments themselves are
openly privatizing public health services.
By
doing this they are shooting two birds in a single shot. On the one hand it serves
as a money saver since it becomes needless and unnecessary for them to engage
workers paying reasonable salary in health sector and on the other hand it can
help them very much for carrying out a high voltage campaign for garnering
votes from the common people announcing it as very big pro people measure.
After getting enormous electoral dividends from this program they are now not
evincing any interest in overseeing how the health care services are being maintained
by their benefactor private agencies.
The
present state of these services can be vividly seen in Andhra Pradesh where 108
ambulance workers have gone on strike indefinitely from the mid night of 18th
of July 2013. The governments which introduced this scheme with much fanfare
have not shown least interest in the well being of the ground level workers
like drivers and emergency technicians who are the backbones of this scheme.
They have not written a single sentence in the MOU about the workers to be
engaged in this service as to how much minimum salary they have to be paid and
how many hours of work can be extracted from them daily. The GVK management
which is conducting the services on Public Private Partnership basis in 10
states are paying the workers very meagre amounts as salaries. The working
conditions of the ground level workers are pathetic. 12 hours working day, no
place for resting and washing, since there is no transfer policy issuance of
indiscriminate transfer orders in order to make the workers succumb and submit-these
are some such aspects of the notorious working conditions prevailing in
GVK-EMRI 108 ambulance service. Because of this very hard working condition the
108 ambulance workers in all the states are much disturbed and have become restless
to the core. As the pioneers the 108 workers of Andhra Pradesh belled the cat
and valiantly started an indefinite strike pressing for their rightful demands.
Even
though 10 days have passed since they had struck the work, the Andhra Pradesh
government is not coming forward to put and end to the strike taking corrective
steps by pressurising the management of GVK to come forward to arrive at an
amicable settlement with the workers union. For the conciliation proceedings in
the labour offices the GVK-EMRI management is not coming and participating. The
government is also not evincing any interest to bring an end to this strike and
restore the health services to the common people.
The
ultimate causality of the attitude of the government is the health of the common
poor people. Since 108 ambulance services is the widely available health care
facility for them they are affected very much and are at loggerheads. This
shows how apathetic the Andhra Pradesh government is towards the health care of
the common people. On the other hand adding insult to injury the A.P Government
is indirectly helping the GVK management by allowing the strike to be prolonged.
Hence
it is high time for the conscious section of the working class all over the
country to come forward to expose the anti people and pro capitalist character of
Andhra Pradesh government and come out in support of the striking workers who are
fighting for the just cause. The common people of Andhra Pradesh who are the
major beneficiaries of this health care service also must come forward to fight
for the restoration of the services by putting pressure upon the government
coming to the streets and taking out movements.
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