SANJOG MAHESHWARI
C1A-42 B M.I.G. FLATS, JANAKPURI,
NEW DELHI-110 58
Ph. No. (011) 25531307
WHITHER CGHS?
-SANJOG MAHESHWARI
The healthcare and medical facilities provided under the banner of Central Government Health Scheme (C.G.H.S) suffer from several anomalies, inadequacies, and discriminatory provisions. While Right to Healthcare and Medical Facilities should be seen as an integral facet of the right to life equally for all, irrespective of the individual’s status, the big babus have ensured that hassle-free world class healthcare, diagnostic and other medical facilities at posh private Nursing Homes, hospitals, healthcare centres at government cost and expenses is available only to the MPs, upper strata of the government employees and pensioners only. The nursing home facilities in government hospitals are also mostly cornered by such higher strata beneficiaries and generally remain out of reach of “commoners” among such beneficiaries. Medical specialists attached to the CGHS dispensaries, if they happen to be of some caliber, remain unavailable on their slotted week days of visit, as for months on end they are away on what is termed as V.I.P duties (whatever it may mean) - attending to the VIPs and their families.
There also exits a complex classification and sub-classification of CGHS beneficiaries in various categories; based on which the scale of facilities admissible to them under the scheme is decided. The parameters and norms differ from beneficiary to beneficiary depending on: the stage and scale of pay or pension, the position he holds or held in the government, whether an employee or pensioner of some “purely government department” (whatever it may mean) or Central Autonomous body, and so forth; as if the life of a “commoner” is of lesser value.
What is astoundingly appalling is: the pensioner-beneficiaries of autonomous bodies are not treated at par with their counterpart retired from purely government service- particularly in the matter of grant of credit facilities in the recognized private healthcare-centres, nursing homes etc. And this is where it hurts them most. Are they not as precariously placed both health-wise and resources-wise as their counterparts who retired from what they choose to call “purly government service”?
Even while they perpetuate and practice such blatant discrimination or for that matter make provisions for it in the rule book, they are not held accountable for the miseries caused thereby to the poor autonomous body pensioner- beneficiaries of the scheme. The traumatic experience and the plight of an autonomous body pensioner-beneficiary of CGHS- when in the evening of his life, suffering from age-induced infirmities and debilitating diseases, he has to run around complying with quite a few absurd formalities, placating highly inflated egos of concerned babus ( still afflicted with colonial mind-set), getting department’s permission before and after the treatment, incurring all expenses from his own slender resources on the spot in the first instance irrespective of the enormity of the amount of expenditure involved, making repeated rounds to the hospital for getting the bills verified by the CGHS medical authorities then to the department from which retired, submitting reimbursement bills that are very much watered down for one reason or the other, settling silly objections raised only for objections’ sake, facing callous indifference, unwarranted hostility, objections and rejections all the way- can better be imagined than described. He is subjected to this unreasonable discrimination only for the sin of his retiring from an autonomous body. While a pensioner-beneficiary retiring from an autonomous body like CSIR in a disgusting display of blatant discrimination is denied credit facilities in the CGHS empanelled
The anomalies are many. Why all pensioners and retirees not treated at par? Is the life of a Class IV employee who after retirement devotes all his spare time doing useful social work in the service of the community for the welfare and well-being of the people, in any way less valuable than that of a senior class one officer who spends whole day incessantly bragging and boasting about that “ wonderful note” he wrote on the office file while he was in service- even while there is no taker?
As respected senior citizens of this country, all pensioners should be treated at par particularly in the matter of healthcare and medical facilities; distinctions of posts and positions held, whether retired from so-called purely Govt. service or hundred per cent Central Govt. funded autonomous body must immediately go. A factory of discontentment seems to be working overtime within the C.G.H.S as more and more Autonomous body pensioners join the rank as its beneficiaries every year and to their great chagrin discover that they are being meted out step-motherly treatment even in matter so vital as healthcare and medical facilities for no fault of theirs. Superannuation is a great leveler. Among pensioners age and age only should be the criterion for according “Priority” in the matter of providing healthcare and medical facilities which otherwise should necessarily be unvarying in scale and standard for all the pensioners across the board. To set down criteria and considerations, other than age-wise seniority/ priority, would tantamount to travesty of truth, justice and fair-play- against all the canons of natural justice and fair-play. .
-SANJOG MAHESHWARI.
C1A-42 B M.I.G. FLATS,
JANAKPURI, NEW DELHI-110058
Ph. (011) 25531307
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