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MHA to come up
with Manipur action plan
A CENTRAL team led by Union
home secretary G K Pillai recently visited the district government
hospital in Senapati, Manipur, to checkout the health facilities
available, only to find the operation theatre (OT) locked. Not
only did the hospital authorities have to struggle to locate the
key when the officials, accompanied by the Senapati district
collector, insisted on inspecting OT, but also the team
discovered, to its horror, that the surgery table had been out of
use for the last eight months.
The reason? No surgeons are available to justify the crores of
public money invested in the specialised equipment needed to run
OT at the District Hospital, Senapati. Not only OTs, even the
mobile medical units (vans), launched with much fanfare to reach
basic health services to the underserved areas, are gathering dust
due to nonavailability of basic medical staff to operate them.
During their surprise visits to the district hospitals in
Senapati and Bishnupur, the Central government officials —
including secretary, DoNER — also gathered that OPD operates only
twice a week and, on a given day, gets only a handful of patients.
Obviously, the ill and injured are going elsewhere — to private
clinics or, worse, to some fleecing quack. Interestingly, most of
the medical attention is taken up by gastro-intestinal diseases
and disorders, given the lack of potable drinking water supply in
the state.
Even though monitoring of health services in a state is not
the job of the Union government but a prime responsibility of the
state, the poor delivery mechanism of Central schemes in
insurgency-hit states like Manipur has now led the Union home
ministry to come up with an action plan detailing development
initiatives to be undertaken in the state in healthcare, water
supply, including provision of drinking water, employment
generation, agriculture, education, etc. The areas to be addressed
in the proposed action plan were identified during Mr Pillai’s
two-day visit to the state on August 21 and 22 for a series of
development seminars, also attended by DoNER and Planning
Commission officials.
The action plan, to be drawn up by MHA, will set a timeline
for projects to be implemented under flagship schemes like NREGA,
Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission, National Rural
Health Mission, PM Gram Sadak Yojana, etc. The Centre, to ensure
that the projects are delivered and the deadlines met, has decided
to make as many as 5,000 copies of the action plan and circulate
it among village chiefs, block level administrators, NGOs, civil
society groups and others to enable them to track the
implementation of the schemes and report any diversion of the
funds.
For the Centre, the push to development and improving the
delivery mechanism of Central schemes will be a major step towards
ending the feeling of alienation among Manipuris for allegedly not
getting a share in the fruits of development. This, in turn, will
tackle the socio-economic factors that often drive the youth of
the state to insurgency.
The insurgency statistics in Manipur only add to the urgency
behind the Central push to the “healing touch” in the state,
saddled with alleged corruption and embezzlement of funds by
public servants. As many as 362 incidents were recorded in the
first half of 2009, up from 324 incidents in the corresponding
period last year. As many as seven security personnel and 51
civilians lost their lives until June 30 this year.
Importantly, Manipur accounted for almost half of the total
752 violent incidents and one-third of the 161 civilian casualties
recorded in the north-eastern region in the first six months of
2009.
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Quality
