National Secular Forum (NSF) today staged a noisy protest Rally against poor healthcare system in Government Medical College Jammu and demanded rollback the decision of hike fee Rs 300 to evening OPD in GMC and free of cost start evening OPDs for needy people.The NSF activists led by Sukhdev Singh, president of the forum assembled on the Campus, alleging that health department has miserably failed to provide proper healthcare facilities to the people.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 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 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, Barket Tahir, Narinder Singh, Harvinder Singh, Rishikesh Rana, Pushpinder Singh, Babber, Ankit, Sunil Kumar, Sanjeev Kumar, Javed, and others.