MARGAO: The Employees State Insurance (ESI) Hospital at Margao and its operations have become an example of how badly a Central scheme constituted for the benefit of employees can be run.
The ESI Hospital was without power for 15 to 20 days recently, and needless to add the 100-bed hospital was a dungeon for the past four years.
The hospital, situated in Khareband, Margao, has been sitting there for decades now. It was renovated with state-of-the-art facilities, supposedly for the betterment of the insured employees registered under it. From a small hospital, it was converted into a 100-bed hospital at a huge additional cost of nearly Rs 84 crore in 2014.
The ESI hospital now has around 37,742 insured persons. It has been 6 years since the hospital was renovated and commissioned, and two years since its inauguration.
On March 4, 2014, the state-of-the-art ESI Hospital was inaugurated, with Union Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes making promising claims to Goans of another hospital for North Goa.
Years have passed, but the hospital is still waiting for equipment and staff. Even its handing over to the State government has been delayed. As a result, the infrastructure at the hospital is in shambles and only 10 per cent of the entire building is being used at present.
When Herald inquired with insiders, it was told that the hospital patients were forced to come out of the hospital and eat their food under streetlights at night for 15 days.
Herald accessed the upper floors and other areas of the hospital only to find brand new wards and rooms locked up. These wards have no beds and equipment. Several private wards have been turned into scrap yards, where old furniture and cartons have been dumped. Herald visited the hospital at around 11.30 am and found no doctor or nurse of any staff at their posts.
Margao MLA Digambar Kamat, who was Chief Minister when the work on the hospital begun, said, “The hospital has been totally ignored. The hospital is totally in shambles now. There are no doctors, no nurses, no advanced equipment,” Digambar said.
On the ground floor, only four beds have been made operational, amongst which only two or three are occupied.
Sources in the hospital informed that the doctors at ESI have been lately referring even secondary medical cases, like blood and urine tests, to private hospitals, which is destroying the purpose of having the multi-crore infrastructure. It was also told that most of the empanelled hospitals have pulled out of their MoUs as the payments of the hospital have been delayed beyond permissible limits.
When contacted Labour Minister Avertano Furtado said, “The state of the hospital is bad because of the absence of equipment and advanced machinery. By the end of this month, the equipments will reach, and only after that the hiring of staff and other important works can be done.”
