Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal has condemned the Punjab government for not taking action against health minister Surjit Kumar Jyani even after two health-related disasters.
In a statement issued here on Monday, Bhattal said that the two serious incidents including the death of four infants in the civil hospital at Ludhiana and 33 people losing their eyesight after undergoing cataract surgeries at a camp organised by a charitable organisation at a hospital near Gurdaspur tantamount to absolute criminal neglect by the health department.
But instead of asking the health minister to quit owning moral responsibility for the incidents, the state government has been brazenly protecting the minister.
Bhatal said that a preliminary enquiry into the incident of 33 people losing eyesight has revealed "gross negligence" by the doctor, the NGO and the other medical faculty.
She said that no standard norms were followed at the camp to conduct eye operations and wondered how the camp was allowed to go ahead in the first place without permission from the district local health authorities!
She said that the state health minister cannot save his skin by just stating no camps would be allowed to be held in future without proper permission as he owns moral responsibility for the alleged negligence of his department.
She said that chief minister Parkash Singh Badal should ask his health minister to go on his own or sack him without delay.
Bhattal said that the Badals are merely interested in pushing their own vested interests and the political agenda is having no concern for the welfare of common man. She said that deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal was indulging in meaningless raids at offices to garner political mileage rather than toning up and improving the administration in the state.
Bhattal said that the Badals are merely interested in pushing their own vested interests and the political agenda is having no concern for the welfare of common man. She said that deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal was indulging in meaningless raids at offices to garner political mileage rather than toning up and improving the administration in the state.