Editor,
We owe many thanks to the Shillong Club for having planted thousands of trees in the Golf course and adjoining areas in collaboration with the Forest Department incurring quite a substantial expenditure. The trees are important and essential for they act as the catchment area for the natural lake under the Golf Course from where good drinking water is supplied to Golf Links village and its vicinity. It also serves as part of the catchment zone of Greater Shillong for the Umiam hydro electric project. These natural resources should be judiciously preserved, and degredation be prevented at all costs.
Yours etc.,
CM Smith Mawlong
Via email
Woes of Central Government Employees
Editor,
The medical services extended to Central Government Employees stationed at Shillong, by the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) through its lone Wellness Centre located at Laitumkhrah is pathetic. At present most of the Central Government offices of Shillong have been brought under the CGHS with a promise to provide quality medical services to the beneficiaries. All Central Government employees have to contribute a fixed charge every month to avail the medical facility extended by CGHS. However, the wellness centre is incapable of providing proper medical service to the beneficiaries due to lack of infrastructure, absence of adequate number of doctors, proper dispensary and lack of medicines and absence of any empanelled hospital. Moreover, fixed number of working hours (8 AM to 3.30 PM every day, except Sunday) is another major hindrance to the beneficiaries. This practically means that the beneficiaries have to get sick within the working hours and during working days of the Wellness Centre. If one falls sick say at 6 PM and is bound to visit a private doctor, in that case the amount spent on medicines and consultation fees shall not be reimbursed by his parent department since CGHS will not approve the same. Hence the beneficiaries are mandatorily contributing to CGHS at the prescribed rate have to spend huge amounts of money in getting medical treatment from private doctors for themselves as well as their family members.
Further, in more than a decade of their existence, the CGHS did not have any empanelled hospital in Shillong which could cater to the needs of the beneficiaries. In case any patient needs hospitalization, they simply refer them to either Shillong Civil Hospital or NEIGHRIMS. Such referral is redundant for the beneficiaries as they can always get themselves admitted to Civil Hospital or NEIGHRIMS as general public that too without any referral. Moreover, most of the times the medicines prescribed by the doctors are not readily available in the CGHS dispensary and the beneficiaries are asked to collect medicines next day or after 2- 3 days. Have the CGHS authorities ever thought of the plight of the patients suffering from medical conditions that need immediate treatment but who have to wait for two/three days or more to get the necessary medicines?
Has CGHS got the right to play with the lives of the beneficiaries? When there is no facility to provide suitable medical services to the beneficiaries, why don’t CGHS allow the departments to opt out of the scheme? Or is there any vested interest in the running the Wellness Centre which recently came under the scanner of CBI? Considering that there is hardly any possibility of dramatic improvement of services of CGHS, Shillong, the CGHS should allow willing departments to opt out of the scheme so that they do not further jeopardize the lives of Central Government employees and their family members.
Yours etc.,
Pranjit Dutta Choudhury
Shillong-1