Southern States - Karnataka   

Government plans bill to tackle quacks

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore Feb. 19. The Government is planning to introduce a Bill to prevent unqualified persons from practising medicine, the Health Minister, Kagodu Thimmappa, said here today.

Mr. Thimmappa told presspersons that the Bill, proposed to be introduced in the next session of the Legislature, would protect those practising the native systems of medicine. Asked about the view of the Government on permitting doctors in government service to have private practice, Mr. Thimmappa said this was difficult to implement. He said there should be restrictions on them practising privately or running of nursing homes while on duty.

Mr. Thimmappa favoured regular recruitment of doctors to end the shortage and said there was no shortage of dentists as they were recruited on a regular basis. There was a need to make postgraduate courses also need-based from next year.

There was a shortage of only 110 doctors in the 2,528 rural hospitals, and the posts would be filled on contract basis. The vacancies had arisen as 110 doctors had left for pursuing postgraduate course.

Recently, 494 doctors were appointed and they included 70 specialists. The Government wanted to relax the rule relating to two years of rural service so that the specialists could be posted at the taluk level.

Mr. Thimmappa indicated that transfers in the department next year would be minimum. It would be done only to correct the mismatch — estimated at 20 per cent — and to accommodate doctor couples.

Referring to the shortage of technicians, Mr. Thimmappa said about 3,000 technicians would be recruited before the end of March. There were 12,000 applications and they were being processed now.

Mr. Thimmappa was happy with the good response to the second phase of the Pulse Polio programme in the State and said the target had been exceeded except in Tumkur, Chitradurga, Mandya, Chamarajanagar, Hassan, Uttara Kannada, and Haveri districts where the coverage ranged between 85.69 and 99.97 per cent.

The Minister, who also holds the Information portfolio, said because of paucity of funds journalists in rural areas could not be given bus passes. Action was being taken to release funds to provide passes to 1,000 journalists.

Following complaints that the district-level committees were not meeting regularly to examine cases of atrocities on journalists, Mr. Thimmappa said he had asked the Deputy Commissioners to hold meetings at least once in two months.

Mr. Thimmappa said the district information offices in the seven new districts would be strengthened shortly. Action would be taken to provide buildings for these offices wherever necessary. He dismissed as unsubstantiated the criticism that the Government was bankrupt. There was no basis for the criticism that the Government did not have funds for payment of salary, carrying out budget programmes, or repayment of loans. Admitting some delay in payment to contractors, Mr. Thimmappa said the accumulation of bills could be avoided if non-Plan expenditure was restricted to budget figures. Anyway, the previous governments were not an exception to this, he added.

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