Why this inexplicable opaqueness on Covid 2.0 status?

Somewhere the administration seems to be slipping in handling the issues. At a time when the State is grappling with second wave of Covid-19, the fate of about 6,000 Corona patients admitted in various teaching hospitals has been put at stake as junior doctors went on strike.

The students and health care workers are demanding that the Government issues a GO that provides ex-gratia for martyred healthcare workers and allotment of separate hospital in the State where these workers and their family members can avail free Covid-19 treatment. They are also demanding incentives as promised by the government with effect from January 2020 and not 2021.

The fact is that these healthcare workers have been putting their lives and the lives of their family members at risk and attending on Covid-19 patients. The health department should have taken the initiative and given them some firm assurances after discussing with the Chief Minister since it involves policy decision well before they were forced to go on strike.

The State administration has very senior and experienced officers. But unfortunately, they did not act as fast as they should have. The very fact that the Chief Minister in a statement on Wednesday said that if junior doctors' demands are justified, the government has no objection to get them solved indicates that the bureaucracy did not take the issue to the notice of the Chief Minister till they went on strike.

If they had discussed the problems of these junior doctors with Chief Minister and conveyed the decisions to these healthcare workers, the strike could have been avoided. The bureaucracy needs to recall what we all studied during school days, "A stitch in time saves nine." A situation where they were forced to go on strike during this crucial period would not have arisen.

In a quick move, the Chief Minister resolved the issue by announcing that their honorarium would be increased by 15 percent and instructed that if junior doctors or their family members should be provided better medical facilities free of cost in NIMS. He also directed that the ex-gratia amount be immediately handed over to the junior doctors.

The administration would have emerged as a magnanimous body if they had attended to these issues before the doctors went on strike. Apparently, there is some communication gap between the babus and the CMO. Why is this gap is something the CMO needs to probe and rectify. There are many issues where the Government has failed to ensure implementation of the decisions it had taken in Covid-19 management.

There was black marketing of Remdesivir injections, private hospitals never implemented the rates fixed by the government for various procedures during Covid treatment and continue to fleece the patients and refuse to handover dead bodies till their coffers are filled. Ambulances too never followed the rates recommended by the Government and no action was taken against them.

The most intriguing aspect is that there was an announcement that the administration had issued notices to 26 erring hospitals but their names were not made public. Why this secrecy no one knows. People expect greater transparency in administration in deeds not in words.