COVID-19: 26 hospitals stay away from hearing called by HC-appointed panel
   Date :20-Sep-2020

Sandip Joshi_1  
 Sandip Joshi, Mayor; Ram Joshi, Additional Municipal Commissioner; Milind Salve, Deputy Commissioner, and others during the meeting of committee appointed by High Court to
monitor COVID-19 situation in city, on Saturday.
 
 
Staff Reporter :
 

If these hospitals remain absent on September 21 too, ‘show cause’ notice will be issued to them, warns Mayor who heads the committee
 
 
The committee appointed by the High Court and headed by Sandip Joshi, Mayor, conducted a hearing on Saturday to know the issues concerning 63 private hospitals in the city. However, 26 hospitals stayed away from the hearing. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has issued orders to convert 102 private hospitals in the city into Dedicated COVID Hospitals (DCH) to ensure that the patients do not face problems concerning availability of beds. However, only 39 of these were operating as DCH. Considering this, the High Court appointed a five-member committee under the chairmanship of the Mayor to take stock of the issues involved from the remaining hospitals.
 
Accordingly, the committee had called a hearing for 63 hospitals. However, as per the NMC statement regarding the hearing, representatives of 26 hospitals were absent while others were present. The committee expressed displeasure over the absence of any representative of these 26 hospitals. These hospitals will be called again on September 21 (Monday) at 4 pm. If these hospitals fail to send their representatives to the hearing on Monday too, the Mayor warned that ‘show cause’ notices would be issued to them. In the hearing held on Saturday, hospitals raised various issues involved in operating as DCH.
 
Most of them stated that they faced problem of manpower. The hospital representatives pointed out that the employees were demanding extra pay. Several employees were resigning during COVID-19 period but were not joining other hospitals. Even the nurses were demanding salary of up to Rs 50,000/- per month. The doctors rued that there was no way to understand why this was happening. In response, Chairman of the committee directed them to submit a list of such employees. “Their services will be requisitioned through Government health machinery,” said the committee members.
 
Sandip Joshi, Mayor and Chairman of the committee, chaired the hearing. Milind Salve, Deputy Commissioner was representative of the Divisional Commissioner; Ram Joshi, Additional Municipal Commissioner represented the Municipal Commissioner; Dr Archana Kothari, President of the Indian Medical Association (IMA); Dr Anil Laddad represented the private hospitals; Milind Meshram, Deputy Municipal Commissioner and Secretary of the committee, conducted the hearing. Addressing the attendees, the Mayor said that the situation concerning COVID-19 was growing serious with each passing day.
 
Hence, he said, the private hospitals in the city should extend co-operation to serve as DCH. Representatives of the hospitals expressed their concerns, and also informed how many beds could be made available to NMC for COVID-19 with the available resources. The hospital representatives assured to make available COVID-19 beds within next seven to 10 days if the issued they raised were resolved. Due to technical difficulties of some hospitals, the decision regarding them was reserved. The committee made it clear that it would take stock if the hospitals implemented the measures they had promised in writing before the committee. Stating that everyone was facing some or the other difficulty. However, he said, the committee has been formed to find a way out. He appealed to the hospitals to come up with solutions and constructive suggestions instead of raising problems.