Medulance, an emergency services provider, on Sunday said it is one of the bidders for running health emergency services in Meghalaya, PTI reported.
Medulance aims to reduce response time while shifting patients to hospitals in the challenging landscape, officials said here.
“Our goal is to deploy a fleet of 5G smart connected ambulances in the state soon. The initiative will bring cutting-edge technology to the forefront of emergency response and improve the chances of saving lives in the state,” Medulance Healthcare co-founder Pranav Bajaj said in a statement.
According to a Medulance official, the company hopes that the right bidder is chosen on the basis of performance and credibility as there is no margin for error when it comes to saving lives. Equipped with 5G smart-connected ambulances, Medulance aims to reduce response and real-time patient monitoring while being shifted to hospitals in the challenging landscape, officials said here.
Three bidders were shortlisted by the state government to take over the service, which had been operated by GVK for 13 years up to 2022 when its contract ended. The government had been running the ambulances itself since then as a stop-gap measure.
Workers in the 108 service had raised numerous complaints about GVK, ranging from salaries to hours worked and they also had concerns about the three bidders.
Medulance, according to workers’ representative Roypar Raswai, “has a record of not being able to pay its employees during Covid-19.”
He also said that the Global Health Service, which has tied up with UKSSA, which runs the 108 and 102 emergency service in Delhi, reportedly could not pay salaries to its workers, which led to protests in 2018. This was, according to the union leader, because the government withheld funds because the company did not provide the required services.
The third bidder, Ziqitza Health Care Ltd, is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for its running of services in Rajasthan, Raswai added. (with PTI inputs)
