House panel summons officials in Mohalla clinics for not paying salaries, stopping tests

New Delhi: The Petition Committee of the Delhi Legislative Assembly on Tuesday summoned Principal Secretaries of the Health and Finance Departments Amit Singla and Ashish Chandra Verma in the matter of stopping salaries of employees in Mohalla clinics and stopping lab tests. Giving information about the matter, AAP leader Saurabh Bhardwaj said that during the proceedings of the committee, it came to light that when the Health Department sent its file to the Finance Department for salary distribution, the Finance Department asked for some such documents which were never received. First asked “For this meeting, we summoned some senior government officials. Among them were 1994 batch officer Verma and 2003 batch IAS officer Singla. We also summoned Sanjeev Jain, Rawat, Nutan (DG Health) and Mohalla Clinic’s Project Coordinator Dr Shaili Kabra to give their statement on the matter.

“During the meeting, the committee was informed that the Finance Department had asked for certain documents before disbursement of salaries, and these are documents which were never asked before disbursement of salaries till now.

They asked for amendments to some cabinet decisions and other government documents,” the AAP leader claimed. Accordingly, the officials of the Health Department have said this on oath. The members of the committee believe that this has been done with the intention of delaying the salaries of these doctors and nursing staff.

We believe that Verma was also involved in taking this decision. What came as a big surprise to all of us was that the health department had an unspent amount of Rs 70 crore, and while only Rs 13 crore was needed to provide salaries to its staff members, they chose not to use it. decided. money,” he said.

“We also learned that Verma had imposed certain conditions on the health department, due to which he was not allowed to use his unspent money,” he added.

He said the committee has ordered Singla to visit at least three mohalla clinics daily from now onwards to take stock of things and suggest ways to improve the facilities being provided to the residents of Delhi.

“The petitions committee has not taken any decision regarding the matter so far as it required some documents from the authorities. We have asked to get the documents at the earliest and after reviewing the documents a decision will be taken regarding the matter.” Bhardwaj said.

“It is very unfortunate that due to such behaviour, the salary of the Mohalla Clinic staff has been withheld for three months. The doctors and staff of these clinics have not been paid their remuneration. Payments to the companies conducting tests in the clinic were also stopped for several months, due to which those companies stopped doing free tests.