Wednesday, May 19, 2010

DOUBLE STANDARD 16-01-09( 1)

SANJOG MAHESHWARI.                                                                                                                

DISTURBING DOUBLE STANDARD
                                                                                 -SANJOG MAHESHWARI

              While autonomous bodies such as Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) with its country-wide jumbo network of Laboratories and sub-laboratories, hundred percent financed and funded by the Central Government, may be correctly, perceived as white elephants- most of the laboratories not earning even one third of several crores of their budgeted expenditure as revenue ever since their inception- it certainly should not be the hidden excuse for the Government to mete out step-motherly treatment to the pensioners of these autonomous bodies, who had spent the best part of their youth serving the organization, and are in no way responsible for creating it, and discriminate them against their counterparts retired from the Government service in the matter of providing health-care and medical facilities through the agency of the Central Government Health Service (CGHS). (It would be interesting to note that quite a few of the non-technical staff of the organization, on one or the other points in time, was drawn from other Central Govt. Departments on deputation/ foreign service, who had to tender technical resignation from their earlier Govt. service on getting permanently absorbed in the CSIR set-up). The denial to them the health-care and medical facilities under the Central Government Health Scheme (C.G.H.S) at par with those made available to the so-called purely government pensioners is tantamount to cruelty as this blatant, abject and uncalled-for discrimination hits where it hurts them most in the twilight years of their life when most of them suffer empty-nest syndrome as well.             
              The government forgets that the hapless autonomous-body pensioners are also worthy senior-citizens of the country. They are as much vulnerable to the age-induced most debilitating, incapacitating, degenerative, and not quite infrequently-terminal diseases and illness, and as inadequately equipped to meet the exorbitant cost involved in their treatment from their own abysmally slender resources, as their counterparts- retirees from the Govt. service- whose cost of treatment in the C.G.H.S empaneled private health-care units and hospitals is borne directly by the government. Thus, while the latter are afforded credit facilities that make them eligible for cashless transactions in the matter of health-care and medical treatment in the recognized private hospitals, diagnostic centres, nursing homes and other health-care centres, the government, in blatant discrimination against the former, denies them the same.
              Further, the pensioner-beneficiaries of C.S.I.R are required to pay for their treatment at the General Public Rates (G.P.R) and get reimbursement at the Government approved Rates which are just about half the G.P.R. For this, also, they have to run around complying with absurd formalities, placating babus, getting department's permission before and after the treatment, incurring all expenses from their own slender resources on the spot in the first instance irrespective of the enormity of the amount of expenditure involved even in the emergent circumstances. . Then irrespective of whether their health permits or not, they have to do several rounds first to get the departmental permission for the treatment then for getting the reimbursement bill on the prescribed forms verified from the treating doctor, then again to the laboratory for its scrutiny only to get reimbursement of completely watered-down bill after several months of making repeated rounds. Cases are not wanting when the reimbursement documents of the claims amounting to thousands of rupees are lost somewhere entailing further miseries to the pensioner-claimant who would, in such cases, rather like to forgo the whole claim than to suffer the harassment- waiting endlessly to get, if lucky enough, the severely retrenched claim.
              They even do not get a permanent CGHS token card for the life and, therefore, are required to re-validate it every calendar year, in spite of the fact that they make full payment for availing CGHS facilities for the whole life prior to their retirement at the same rates and scale as are applicable to their counterpart in the government service. They have no place to go if, unfortunately, they happen to fall ill somewhere outside the place from where they normally get these truncated CGHS facilities.             
              The babus of their department with abnormally swelled egos also take sadistic pleasure in retrenching the claimed amount on the most flimsy grounds (feigning ignorance of the Hon’ble Delhi high court’s verdict that mandates full reimbursement of the expenditure incurred on the medical treatment), and that too after the claim is subjected to several absurd objections settling of which is no less than a cruel punishment to these aged and much-harassed pensioner patients.
              The autonomous body pensioner-beneficiaries of CGHS have made several representations to the authorities of the Health Ministry including those to the Hon’ble Minister but all have fallen on deaf ears so far and the victims of this blatant discrimination continue to live under the ever-lengthening shadow of fear and insecurity
              The denial of credit facility and cashless service by private recognized hospitals to the CSIR and other autonomous body pensioners who are CGHS beneficiaries is a cruel, inhuman and heartless joke still being perpetuated on this particular section of hapless senior citizens in the twilight years of their life even though their counterpart retirees from the government have been availing the facility for almost a decade now. Even the CSIR, which is an autonomous body, has all along been indifferent to the plight of its pensioners, doing absolutely nothing about their health-care and welfare in the twilight years of their miserable existence- the fading years in which they need it the most.
         Instead they vent their unwarranted wrath on their pensioners. They  get their medical reimbursement etc paid many months after they become due and payable. If, even after several decades of non-performance by the C.S.I R., the government decides to spend thousands of crores annually on it, just to keep the show going, despite of being grossly unhappy with it; it is the government’s problem. Why should they take it out on the hapless pensioners of the organization? They have absolutely nothing to do either with its creation or its policy-planning at any sage then why should they be subjected to this blatant discrimination vis-à-vis their counterpart retirees from the purely Government service- whatever it may mean.
As respected senior citizens of this country, all pensioners should be treated at par, in all matters, particularly in making provisions for health-care and medical facilities. Priorities should be determined and assigned only on the basis of the age of the pensioners- the elder ones having first claim on the Government controlled health-care facilities and medical attendance. And certainly not on the basis of the department or the post or position from which one retired. Retirement just like death, is the greatest equalizer. And if the C.S.I.R is not adequately serving the purpose for which it was established then they should do something about that instead of inflicting unwarranted mental torture and agony on the pensioners for no fault of theirs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             --SANJOG MAHESHWARI 


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