Monday, Jan 03, 2005
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Advts: Classifieds | Employment | New Delhi
By Lalit K. Jha
NEW DELHI, JAN. 2. Visualise this! Slum children going to a Coca Cola Municipal Primary School at Rajouri Garden in West Delhi or a mother taking her daughter to a Max Municipal Child Health Care Centre at Badarpur in South Delhi. Well, with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi deciding to invite private players in a big way to uplift the quality of primary education and basic health care facilities in the Capital, schools and dispensaries carrying names of popular products, corporate bodies or individuals could become a reality in the New Year. An obligatory function of the MCD, the quality of primary education and basic health care facilities has deteriorated over the past one decade. Given the expertise of the private sector and its pioneering efforts in these two sectors, the Municipal Commissioner, Rakesh Mehta, is seeking their assistance to provide quality services to the people. "It can even reduce the costs for MCD," he said. Though, public-private participation has to be taken on a case-to-case basis and the civic body is in an advance stage of talks with Max Hospital for adopting a child health care centre at Badarpur, Mr. Mehta said the civic body was in the process of evolving a policy framework in this sector. Both the civic body and the private players would make 50 per cent investment each. The MCD provides maternity and child health care services through about two-dozen maternity homes, 110 maternity and child welfare centres and 51 sub-centres. All these centres have impressive buildings and well-trained doctors, but these do not have the modern equipments to diagnose and conduct tests and also medicines are not available most of the time, Mr. Mehta conceded. "The joining of hands between the pubic and private players would help us improve the basic health care facilities and bring it at par with those of the developed world," he said. In primary education, Mr. Mehta said he has asked the Additional Commissioner (Education) to prepare a policy on this issue. Though the MCD so far does not have a policy framework for public-private partnership in education, he said there was a need to bring in professionals in this sector. The civic body imparts primary education to nearly 10-lakh students through 1,800 schools. Asserting that there was a need to have a transparent mechanism while developing the policy, he said under the new system occasional assistance would not be welcome. Under the new policy, the civic body would encourage its municipal primary schools to be run by private school management, organisations working in the field of education, corporate houses, companies and even by rich people who want to associate themselves with education. "We would even allow such people and organisations to add their name to such schools like Basanti Devi Municipal Primary School," he said. "However, the name would be included only till the time the donor continues to contribute money, which not only has to be substantial but also more than what we spend," he said.
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