TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Goa Medical College was in the news last week and predictably debated at length on the floor of the House last week. Right from the flash strike by resident doctors to the threat of a strike due to the major power failure for three continuous days as well as water woes at GMC, doctors engaging themselves in private practice and the rotation policy was all debated.
However, besides Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardessai and Bicholim MLA Naresh Sawal, the others were surprisingly quiet. Sardessai slammed the Asia’s oldest hospital GMC alleging the ‘administration has lost its character.’ He said, “…that administration of GMC has lost its character. For four days in a row, the services at GMC were interrupted because of power breakdown. The patients, doctors and (medical) students were in dire state.”
The legislator also pointed out the Blood Bank racket alleging GMC staff-politician nexus citing an expose by a local news channel that private pathologists would charge more than double the fees for ‘private’ blood tests from the GMC patients.
The Fatorda legislator also alleged that several doctors were carrying out private practices right under the nose of the government, alleging that the leave pattern of some doctors between November and March was an indicator of their involvement in private practices.
Sawal also brought up the issue of water and electricity.
Surprisingly, Health Minister Laximikant Parsekar instead of listening to the woes of the resident doctors preferred to gloss over the problem and said that the problem was immediately rectified. He also asked the doctors to not make an issue over such small problems, making it clear that he had not even read the letter by the doctors that had clearly said that the problem was some 8 months old with the last three months being very acute.
The Health Minister had also attacked the Bicholim MLA for bringing up the water issue in the House saying that this was untrue and he was personally monitoring the issue just before the issue broke in the media.
