National Secular Forum (NSF) today staged a noisy protest in commerce college against poor healthcare system in Government Medical College Jammu and demanded a high level probe into the utilization of funds meant for Jammu hospitals and rollback the decision of hike fee Rs 300 to evening OPD in GMC.Addressing a gathering here today, NSF President Sukhdev Singh said due to the casual attitude of Health as well as Medical Education ministers the poor people were suffering on the account of health problems. “The start of Evening Shift for private practice of Government Medical College (GMC) doctors is a live example of Government’s apathetic attitude,” he said.-
He added that the decision of the authorities to start evening OPDs was a sheer exploitation of common masses that will now have to pay more without getting any additional facility in return.Sukhdev Singh stated that it would rather give an advantage to the doctors practicing in evening clinics. “On one hand, the State Government is announcing that it would ban private practices of doctors and on the other hand, it authorizes them to run them during evening. It is very difficult for a common man to bear the expenses in these clinics because of their weak economic condition”, Sukhdev Singh said.
Sukhdev Singh further said the in spite of having all the necessary facilities available at Chopra Nursing Home, the government was not taking any initiative to make it functional there by helping the private players indirectly.“It seems as if the government is not interested in bringing proper health care facilities to the common people who are facing various hardships just because of the negligent attitude of the authorities towards Health sector”, Sukhdev Singh claimed.Sukhdev Singh added that facility of Critical Care Ambulance (CCA) Government hospitals has not been provided by the concerned authorities till now and people have no option but to make it available at their own which costs them too much. He claimed that people have to pay Rs 35,000 to 40,000 to get CCA. He added that this practice was hitting the people very hard.Among those who were present in the protest included Vikram Madhyal, Qayoom Malik ,Altaf Hussain, Bhupinder, Vishal, Tarun Kumar, Ankush Choudhary, Akshay, Richa Jamwal, Mandeep Kour, Hari Mohan Diksha Sharma , Joginder Kumar, Anil Kumar, Balwinder, Pawan, Jugal, Anju Bala, , and others.