Karnataka   

Hospital staff in Davangere accused of demanding money

DAVANGERE: Vice-president of the Davangere Zilla Panchayat Manjappa and chairman of the Standing Committee on Health and Education Venkatesh have alleged that some staff at the Chigateri General Hospital here have been demanding bribe from parents if they wished to see their newborn babies. The amount varied depending on the gender of the baby, they added.

At the Karnataka Development Programme review meeting held here on Monday, Mr. Manjappa and Mr. Venkatesh said that unless parents paid up, the staff would neither show them their child nor bring the baby for breastfeeding.

This is a mockery on the one-week Breastfeeding Week being observed, they said. Officials of the Health Department and doctors at the Chigateri General Hospital had emphasised the importance of breastfeeding babies within one hour of birth, they said.

Superintendent of the hospital Sheetal Hiregowdar said he would initiate action against the erring staff if there were specific complaints. Irritated by his remark, both Mr. Manjappa and Mr. Venkatesh told him that they were not making the allegations just like that, but had received several complaints from people, particularly mothers. They instructed the official to put an end to corruption at the hospital. They told Mr. Hiregowdar that they would write to the Government seeking his transfer if he failed to take immediate action.

The appointment of 132 auxiliary nurse midwives by the Health Department, without taking the zilla panchayat into confidence, also figured at the meeting, and members of the panchayat resolved to cancel the appointments as they had not been made according to the rules. Before appointing candidates, the department should have obtained the consent of the Standing Committee on Health and then gone ahead with recruitment, Mr. Venkatesh said and added that the district health officer had unilaterally decided to appoint the ANMs, which was illegal.

The alleged misuse of funds in distribution of textbooks and other materials to students of Urdu schools, was also discussed, with the zilla panchayat deciding to order a thorough probe into the matter soon.

Chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat Guthi Jambonath and Joint Director of Agriculture Shivamurthappa were present.

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