Kerala
is losing big money from the Centre as part of its allotment to the Ayush Department
as the state is yet to set up the department. Though into the final stages and
the health Minister announcing at regular intervals that the department would
be set up at the earliest, official apathy is alleged to have led to the delay.
The latest announcement from Health Minister V S Sivakumar
was that the department would be set up in the first week of April. It is
alleged that some officials in the health department were creating certain
impediments in the process of setting up the department. The sources said that
it is highly critical that the department was not set up when the government
had no financial burdens. There was no need for creating any additional posts
and no money is needed from the state exchequer, they said.
With the delay in setting up Ayush Department, it has been
estimated that the state was losing crores of central fund. The state is losing
funds for the different schemes under Ayush. And it is also alleged that some
of the funds that has been allotted could not be used effectively. If there was
an independent department, then all the money could have been utilised in a
fruitful manner, they said.
''There is immense scope once the department comes up. Now
the state is using only minimal fund from the centre,'' said Ayurveda
Medical Association of India (AMAI) General Secretary Dr Rejith Anand. He also
noted that the state government only applied for minimal funds from the centre
as part of Ayush when compared to the other states.
He said that a separate department would only help in
modernising the hospitals, pushing up research activities, development of
education, improving quality of drugs and availability of medicinal plants. All
these could give an impetus to the growth of traditional medicines, he added.
Source: the New Indian express
No comments:
Post a Comment