Basti dawakhanas staff play truant

A few are even skipping duty and entrusting the tasks to nurses and attending to their personal work, a GHMC official said.

Hyderabad: At a time when the State government is making all-out efforts to set up more basti dawakhanas across the GHMC limits and extend quality medicare to the urban poor, staff at these wellness centres seemed to have not got the point and are turning up late for duty. Monitoring too has been under par, according to public representatives.

In November last, 24 basti dawakhanas were launched on a single day in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits, taking the tally of these centres to 224. The government also issued directions to the corporation to open more such facilities to help the poor.

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However, taking undue advantage of the manual attendance system, many staff members, including a few doctors, are turning up late for duty. A few are even skipping duty and entrusting the tasks to nurses and attending to their personal work, a GHMC official said.

In a few cases, some staff were found to be using equipment, including tabs meant for telemedicine, to conduct personal teleconsultation sessions. All these issues were brought to the notice of higher authorities by a few elected public representatives, but nothing much had been done so far, the official said.

Accentuating the problem was the poor monitoring by officials in charge of the concept and also the manual attendance system. Generally, basti dawakhanas are operated from 9 am to 4 pm. Initially, when they were launched, an app-based attendance system was introduced under a pilot basis at a few locations.

Under the system, staff have to log in from the respective centres and it automatically detects the latitude and longitude to authenticate their login locations. But for reasons better known to the authorities, this is not being implemented effectively.

The government pays about Rs 42,000 a month for a doctor and considerable salaries to nurses and others. Yet, many are not punctual. Similarly, for specialist doctors turning up in evening clinics, Rs 3,500 is paid a day for operating the basti dawakhana from 4 pm to 8 pm.

Each facility has on an average of 70 to 150 people visiting every day for medical assistance, treatment and diagnostic tests, all of which are offered free. There will be a doctor, staff nurse and medical assistant apart from technicians in the pathology lab.

The dawakhanas are useful for immediate medical assistance, and depending on the intensity of ailment, patients are referred to Osmania, Gandhi and other hospitals for better care.

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