BJP demands Rims director’s ouster, infrastructure upgrade

Ranchi: BJP lawmakers and workers on Monday afternoon protested outside the office of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims) director, Dr Kameshwar Prasad, to protest against the hospital’s deteriorating health infrastructure and apathy of its doctors and medical staff towards their patients.
The dharna came after the Jharkhand high court recently criticised Prasad and the hospital management for its poor health services on multiple occasions.
Organised by the party’s Ranchi Mahanagar unit, Monday’s dharna was attended by BJP heavyweights like C P Singh (Ranchi MLA and former minister) and Aditya Sahu (Rajya Sabha MP).
Talking about their dharna, Singh said, “The patients and their relatives keep calling the elected representatives and the party workers with complaints about the lack of doctors, ignorant nurses and paramedical staff, and the unavailability of beds. The current director has been an absolute failure in discharging his duties. We urge the Hemant Soren government to replace him with someone efficient.”
Sahu added, “This hospital is Jharkhand’s biggest government-run facility and attends to thousands of poor patients. Unfortunately, people are gradually losing their faith in this hospital and the government does not even care.”
The BJP lawmakers also demanded that the government contemplates appointing former Army doctors and retired armed forces officers to weed out corruption and enforce discipline among the hospital’s doctors and staff.
Besides the incumbent director’s removal, the lawmakers further said the hospital’s infrastructure must be overhauled immediately apart from buying new equipment to replace the defunct ones and expediting the process of appointment of nurses and paramedical staff to mitigate its shortage of manpower. Notably, BJP’s protests came on the eve of the governing council meeting of Rims which will be chaired by health minister Banna Gupta.
The minister did not respond to calls for his comments on the dharna.