Need to improve the PMC’s health schemes
23 Nov, 2013
An application was filed with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the minutes of the corporation officials’ meeting held on October 14, 2013.
The minute, received in the reply, shows that there are several lacunae existing in the corporation’s health schemes i.e. urban health scheme meant for poor people and the contributory health scheme (CHS) meant for corporation’s employees. The reply shows that there is no proper mechanism to verify whether a beneficiary has undergone the medical processes that have been claimed and to ascertain whether the beneficiary truly needed them.
The minute also shows that though the medical documents submitted by the beneficiaries are scrutinized by the civic officials, there is no specific doctors’ panel to ascertain if the beneficiary truly requires undergoing the tests or the surgery advised by the private hospitals. The reply reveals that the committee that should meet every three months to take stock of claims made and claims settled had last met in 2005 and since then no meetings have taken place. The reply also revealed that computerization work for neither of the schemes has been completed even though CHS scheme has been functional since 1997 and urban poor health scheme is in vogue since 2010.