Now if the government plans to handover management of such hospitals to private sector management question may be legitimately raised why it is so. It clearly suggests the incompetence of the government and the Ministry of Health in particular to run the hospitals. In other words it sounds like privatization of the government services without the government privatizing itself. How then the government can justify its existence if it can’t run basic treatment facilities for the common masses.
It is no doubt a big challenge to run big institutions like public hospitals and the government is there to take the challenge. It has huge budget and manpower and yet if it accepts the failure it means poor incapable leadership and lack of effective control over the hospital staff and other service providers. In fact over politicization of the entire bureaucracy and hospital management system in particular have broken the chain of control all over to create an anarchic situation where the government appears now planning to surrender. We must say the government must act to control its own unruly political cadres ruining the public hospitals. A government worthy of name can’t skip its responsibility under the cover of privatizing the management to cover its own failure. Another motive behind such thinking may be that such privatization of hospital management may open the door for people closer to the government to take over them to make huge fortune.
It can’t be an acceptable proposition in our view that the government will spend huge budget for such hospitals’ management, carry out procurement of equipment and other technology while private people will raise cost of treatment. Then where the poor will go. In a responsible system of government people run the State institutions effectively. On their failure new people take charge. We must say the government must prove itself or pave way for others to run. We can’t let our big hospitals to be destroyed this way.
