Several dialysis centres in Karnataka have not been functional in the recent months as the private entity that the government has tied up with went bankrupt, Health Minister K Sudhakar said on Thursday.
The minister was speaking in the Legislative Assembly in response to a question raised by Tarikere MLA D S Suresh.
BR Life, a private entity linked to Abu Dhabi-based Indian billionaire B R Shetty, has gone bankrupt and the quality of the services have either gone down or in many places have been stopped, according to Sudhakar.
The state government is in the process of coming up with an alternative and the issue would be resolved within a month, Sudhakar said. "In 2016-17, the then Congress government gave the tender to two organisations. The BR Shetty Group has gone bankrupt and as result the services have been affected," he explained.
Owing to this, the state government itself is paying the salaries of staff from May 2021 making use of the National Health Mission (NHM) funds, he added.
However, the MLAs contested the minister's version and said the staff had not been paid salaries. Congress MLA Mahantesh Kaujalagi said the staff have not been paid wages from at least eight to ten months. Patients are suffering. In many cases, patients are having to wait mid-way through the dialysis for electricity as generators are not working, he pointed out, urging the government to set up generators.
Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri, too, said the issue with dialysis centres was a statewide problem and asked the government to rectify it at the earliest.
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Published 23 September 2021, 16:41 IST