AICC national spokesperson Sravan Dasoju on Thursday demanded Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao to immediately curtail the exorbitant COVID-19 test charges in Telangana and save citizens from being plundered by private hospitals and diagnostics centres. The senior Congress party leader appealed to the Chief Minister to initiate a strict action against the private hospitals which are charging hefty fee for conducting RT-PCR tests at hospitals as well at home collection services.
At a press conference here on Thursday, he criticised the government for issuing namesake GOs and ignoring their implementation thereby providing an opportunity to the private hospitals and diagnostics laboratories to collect their own charges.
“On one side we see a surge of the second wave of COVID-19 but on the other side the government of Telangana has completely failed in terms of conducting an adequate number of COVID-19 tests. There are not many test facilities available in Telangana. On top of it, even if anybody wants to go to the private diagnostics laboratory on their own to conduct the test, it’s costing huge money for them,” he charged.
According to him, on December 21, 2020, the government of Telangana has come up with GO no. RT 539 where it clearly said that the samples which are collected at the labs should be priced at ₹500 and the samples which are collected from home should be priced ₹750 per test.
“But even today, if you go to any diagnostics laboratory in Telangana or Hyderabad, one needs to shell out ₹850 per test to be conducted at the hospital and ₹1,200 per a home collection test, which means that there is scant respect for the GO issued by the government and nobody is giving any importance to government orders,” Mr Sravan slammed.
