good morning! this is your health minister Azad calling

CENTRAL HEALTH SCHEMES
Fake beneficiaries exist, admits Azad
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Jammu, January 29
“Good Morning. This is your Health Minister calling. Have you taken benefits under this health scheme of the Central government?” Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad made several such calls to poor and needy people in the last few months to ascertain whether they were real beneficiaries or were just fake entries in the records.

But despite the Azad’s monitoring of the records himself with such calls, corruption in the form of fake beneficiaries has been prevalent in the department. “The result has been mixed,” he revealed to mediapersons today saying the phone numbers of several persons were found to be fake. “In order to check corruption, the Ministry of Health had a few months ago started a system of creating name and telephone based data in which any person who availed of the benefits under a health scheme would be included. I personally monitored it and in four states checked so far, one of them had a lot of fake entries.”

Without naming the state, Azad said it seemed at least a year or more was needed to weed out corruption through fake entries. This candid statement comes from a man who as the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir was the first in the country to enact a law to confiscate property of corrupt officials, and had taken on the alleged corruption in the Medical Council of India after he took over as the Union Health Minister.

“I think only constant monitoring through such phone calls at the top level that corruption can be eradicated. I am confident that as all new schemes of the health sector have a mandatory provision for name and telephone data, the probability of fake entires would lessen and end eventually.”

Azad revealed this while announcing a new scheme for the below poverty line people in the country. He said all those BPL cardholders, who undergo treatment in a government hospital for a life threatening disease, would get 100 per cent free treatment. “For ailments other than life threatening ones, a patient would get Rs 20,000 if the cost of treatment was up to Rs 50,000. For medical cost between Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh, a patient would get Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 for above Rs 1 lakh cost,” he added.

He said all these schemes would also have a name and telephone database, which he would personally monitor to check corruption.

He warned of strict action against corruption reminding that the Health Department was the only department which one visited during births and deaths. “That is why I have coined a new tag for the department. It is Health Department - from conception to cremation. We are the only department that provides help right from the time a women gets pregnant up to the death of an individual.”

(first published in The Tribune dated January 30, 2011)
link : http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110130/j&k.htm#3