Dr Daljit S Cheema asks CM to tell Pbis why patients were being turned away from hospitals and why students were not being provide textbooks
Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had miserably failed to deliver on both health and education fronts and asked chief minister Bhagwant Mann to tell Punjabis why patients were being turned away from hospitals and even text books were not being provided to students if the income of the State had increased under AAP tenure.
In a statement here, senior leader Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said it was shocking that patients were being turned away from the PGI and Government Medical College sector 32 here because the AAP government had failed to clear dues of the institutions vis a vis the Ayushman Bharat Mukh Mantri Sehat Bima Yojna. He said the government seemed imperious to the suffering of patients from Punjab visiting these prestigious institutions despite claiming that the health sector was an area of primary focus. “Needy patients are not only being refused treatment by prestigious institutions here but even being turned away by hospitals across Punjab because of the AAP government’s poor record with regard to implementation of the scheme”.
Asserting that the government was supposed to cover 65 per cent of the State’s population under the Ayushman Bharat scheme, Dr Daljit Cheema said while the government was defaulting on the scheme, it was unable to provide medicines and specialized tests to people in government facilities. “This is the true ‘badlav’ which has taken place in the health sector”.
Dr Cheema said the state of the education sector was no different with the government failing to provide textbooks to students till days before the bi-monthly examinations of class six to twelve. Asserting that this was a true reflection on the state of the education sector, Dr Cheema said “if this is the AAP model to improve the education sector in Punjab we can very well stay away from it”.
The SAD leader said even while PGI had been denied Rs 16 crore and the Medical College Rs 2.3 crore, the AAP government had spent Rs 40 crore on advertisements alone in the last five months. “The government has also claimed that it has improved revenue collection and increased the income of the State. Despite that both the health and education sector are being denied funds even as AAP ministers and legislators vie with each other to intimidate doctors and teachers for cheap publicity alone”
