THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The government has decided to waive off a huge penalty imposed on the 108 KANIV ambulance service operator GVK EMRI by overruling the objections of the finance department.
The state cabinet on January 20 decided to waive off Rs 25.38 crore as penalty imposed on the service operator for not meeting the specific time limit for responding to the phone calls from the public and for despatching the ambulances in response to the calls. The penalty was worked out on the basis of the clauses in the servicelevel agreement between the Kerala medical services corporation and GVK EMRI. The penalty was worked out as Rs 16.31crore, Rs 6.23 crore, Rs 1.84 crore and Rs 98.28 lakh for four quarters since October 2019.
The health department had sought the opinion of the finance department as well as the KMSCL regarding the company’s request to waive off the penalties. The finance department wrote that it cannot agree to the proposal since the penalty is fixed as per the conditions in the agreement.
“For the quality of the services, response time is one of the key parameters and strict penalty for maintaining the response time. The dispatch time is a factor that the operator has to take care internally to maintain the response time. The penalty was calculated as per the tender conditions only,” KMSCL managing director responded.
The company had sought the waiver in the wake of Covid-19. It said that as most of the ambulances were at the disposal of the district collectors for Covid-19 related services, the company could not meet the response time and the dispatch time as per the agreement clause. The penalty for initial delay in the deployment of the ambulances that was calculated as Rs 27.17 crore was revised to Rs 8.71crore by agreeing to the arguments of the company that the delay was due to the heavy rain and flooding situation in North Indian states.
The cabinet also decided to continue with the services of M/s GVK EMRI based on the recommendation of the health department. In this regard, the finance department had also cited that almost all the public health centres, community health centres and taluk hospitals have ambulances purchased from the MP and MLA funds, and if all these are empanelled with a call centre, the lion’s share of revenue that goes to M/s GVK EMRI (that has deployed 315 ambulances in the state) will come back to the government.