Meghalaya could face disaster through the reduction of the 108 emergency services because of the “uncaring attitude” of the State government towards the emergency workers, senior Congress legislator Ampareen Lyngdoh has told Highland Post.
Employees of the 108 emergency services under the banner of the Meghalaya Emergency Management and Research Institute Workers’ Union (MEMRIWU) are demanding that the State government take over the service from GVK EMRI. The union has also threatened agitations if the government continues to ignore their demand.
“When the 108 services came through the NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) it was in the initial period. We see in all other government plans and interventions in the past that there has been this initial period of experimentation following which an evaluation is made that these are properly invested in and the government has to take a stand as to whether or not the government should take over all of these entities,” Lyngdoh said.
“Some entities have to be taken over because we have seen now that the 108 staff have been protesting for a very long time and it seems that they have never been given justice although they are the only emergency service that is serving the people at large and saving lives,” she added.
As in other subjects, Lyngdoh accused the government of failing to share any information, with the opposition only hearing about it through the media. “We don’t see any consultation going on across the board,” she added.
The Congress party plans to debate and lend ideas on ways to resolve the issue in the upcoming budget session of the state Assembly.
“The government in the past has invested in the PHCs (Public Health Centres), CHCs (Community Health Centres) and various health centres across the country but, after seeing that the public cannot access these centres because of the distance to them, the next step was to provide the emergency services that would serve further and bring administration and healthcare closer to the public,” the East Shillong MLA said. “If you have health centres that cannot be reached by the public then their very existence becomes redundant.”
Stating that other states where the 108 service is in private hands are doing very well, Lyngdoh said that Meghalaya needs “to borrow the success stories” from those states.
“Otherwise whatever has been invested in the system could go to waste and employees left disgruntled,” she added.
