KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) authorities on Monday asked ward coordinators not to organize Swasthya Sathi camps in their respective wards till a clarity on such camps was obtained from the Election Commission officials. Sources in the KMC said several ward coordinators on Monday called on the KMC Board of Administrators (BoA) chairman Firhad Hakim to seek a clarification on continuation of various social welfare schemes, including Swasthya Sathi, after the model code of conduct came into force on Friday.
Hakim on Monday held a meeting with the municipal commissioner Binod Kumar to seek his opinion on the issue. “We have been asked to make only corrections for those Swasthya Sathi cards which have already been distributed but with errors either in the spellings or figures. We can’t grant permission for holding of camps for inclusion of new applicants or issue health insurance cards,” said a civic official in the KMC social sector department.
Besides the Swasthya Sathi scheme, the KMC social sector department has been asked not to process applications for old age and widow pension schemes due to presence of model code of conduct. A KMC official said of 40,000 old age and widow pension applications, which were submitted to the civic body in the past one year, 16,000 could be processed and the cards were distributed to the beneficiaries.
“Under model code of conduct we can’t issue new cards and hence the applicants should wait till the election results are declared and the restrictions under the model code of conduct are lifted,” a KMC official said.
Swarupa Ghosh, a widow and a resident of Beliaghata, rued that now she would have to wait for over two months or more as the application that she had submitted recently could not be processed. “I was waiting for an approval from the KMC as I badly need whatever amount the civic body grants as widow pension after the sudden death of my husband recently. Now, I will have to wait for a longer period,” she said.
This is not all. A section of ward coordinators on Monday expressed their apprehension over the fate of Maa canteens that are running in at least 100 places across the city. “I apprehend that we won’t be allowed to run these canteens in their present format as in some places the canteens portray images of the administrative head of the state. We need to change the format soon,” a Trinamool Congress ward coordinator representing a central Kolkata neighbourhood said requesting anonymity.
Similarly, the KMC brass is also worried over several other welfare schemes, one of which is Rupasree. Under the scheme, a girl from a financially backward family gets Rs 25,000 for her marriage. “Keeping in mind the current wedding season, we had approved some Rupasree applications. Several other such applications are pending. We will need to talk to the state on this,” a KMC official said.