The Government Medical College Hospital (MCH), Ernakulam, appears to be an orphan in many senses of the term. No political party wants to touch it even with a barge pole.
The government took over the medical college, originally set up as a cooperative initiative, following a high-pitched public movement and placed it under the Cooperative Academy of Professional Education (CAPE).
But, nearly an-year-and-a-half later, nothing has moved to take the institution to the next level.
The medical college still does not have full-fledged super specialty departments such as Cardiology, Nephrology, Endocrinology, Onco-surgery and Neurosurgery.
The staff members at the hospital are yet to get full pay and other benefits such as DA because their posts are yet to be notified. Developmental work at the college have been put on hold because the inventory of all buildings and the funds spent on each are yet to be brought under the relevant heads of account of the Health Department.
Although the government created 350 posts following strictures from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), steps are yet to integrate the medical professionals and others with the State medical education service. Although the government had conducted verification of the qualifications and eligibility of the teaching faculty and the non-teaching staff at least three times since the government takeover on December 17, 2013, there has been no follow up action so far. Those in the know of things now say that the task has been left to the Principal. The question they ask is how the Principal or whoever holds charge of that position could take a decision on such a sensitive issue with potential for court cases when the government is unable to do so.
Whenever a Finance Minister gets ready to present his budget, his office is flooded with representations from various interest groups. This time, however, Finance Minister K.M. Mani was a worried man whenever someone approached him for a concession. His was a peculiar dilemma. Facing as he does serious corruption charges and the accusation that ‘he had sold successive budgets,’ Mr. Mani could hardly think of granting any concession to any major segment of the economy. At the same, he could not turn away those who approached him with requests for concessions.
One section that had hoped for a kind gaze from the Finance Minister was the gold industry. Although the gold industry had approached the Finance Minister with request for tax concession, Mr. Mani was silent about it in his budget, perhaps a case of one bitten twice shy.
With inputs from R. Ramabhadran Pillai and Shyama Rajagopal (Kochi)
