Cabinet boost to health sector; nod to 1300 plus posts of doctors, nurses

RANCHI: In a major boost to the ailing health sector in Jharkhand to overcome acute manpower crunch, cabinet on Tuesday sanctioned around 1300 posts of doctors and medical practitioners across its medical colleges and hospitals. Addressing the media after cabinet meeting, state health minister Ramchandra Chandravanshi informed that major chunk of the posts of doctors were sanctioned for PMCH in Dhanbad and MGM in Jamshedpur.
“For PMCH, a total of 513 doctors were sanctioned while for MGM 713 doctors,” said Chandravanshi. Additional posts were sanctioned separately for the upcoming super-specialty wing of PMCH. “For this we sanctioned 77 new posts of doctors, mainly specialists for different wings,” he said. 12 sub-divisional hospitals too will get manpower. “As many as 288 posts have been created across the board for the first time,” said the minister.

To streamline functioning of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims) in Ranchi, cabinet decided to separate administrative work and medical activities. “We have created three new posts—additional director administration, additional director finance and deputy director finance at Rims. Director Rims will solely be taking care of health aspect while administrative side will be dealt separately. It will ease burden on doctors,” said Chandravanshi.

In another significant decision, cabinet decided to extend gas connections to women under Centre’s Ujwala scheme for all ration card holders in the state. As per the state food and civil supplies department data, there are about 57 lakh people with valid ration cards. Out of this, 26 lakh people were covered under Ujwala scheme but will now be expanded.

“The main criteria for this is that any beneficiary should have prior gas connection,” said state food and civil supplies minister Saryu Roy. “For this, a budget worth Rs 45 crore were sanctioned in the supplementary budget. For next fiscal, budgetary provision of Rs 150 crore has been earmarked,” informed Roy.

A total of 20 proposals were cleared in the cabinet meeting today, some of which included nod to formation of State and district level fire arms bureau under The Arms Rules, 2016 for proper disposal of seized weapons, transfer of 12.50 acre land to Central Coalfields Limited on payment of around Rs 24 crore for the company’s plan of setting up of medical college among others.