List deficiencies in hospitals: Bombay High Court
The state had failed to comply the order of appointing 500 guards by April 5.
Mumbai: Expressing displeasure with the action taken by the state government and civic body with regard to the security, living and working condition of resident doctors, the Bombay high court on Thursday directed the state and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to place on record specific problems and measures pertaining to each BMC-run and government-run hospital including security, wages and living conditions. The court also called for CCTV footage of both the Dhule and Thane incidents and also the police statements recorded to ascertain the root cause of the problem.
A division bench headed by the Chief Justice was hearing the public interest litigation pertaining to agitation of resident doctors in government and civic-run hospitals.
The petition had prayed for directions from the court to the resident doctors, state and civic body to ensure that such agitations are deterred in the larger interest of the public.
Advocate Prashant Pophale along with senior counsel Sujoy Kantawala appearing on behalf of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) informed the court that despite its March orders to appoint security personnel, the government had appointed only 300 security guards.
The state had failed to comply the order of appointing 500 guards by April 5. Referring to the attack on doctors at Thane Civil Hospital last week, Mr Pophale also pointed out that the instances of attacks was not restricted to resident doctors but was also seen in government and civic run hospitals. This, he said, was due to lack of security personnel and failure of the hospital to implement visitor norms stringently.
The court directed advocate Milind More, who was appearing for the state, to file an affidavit with regard to the Thane incident and also submit unedited CCTV footage of the incident and the Dhule incident too.
The court, while directing the state and civic corporation to come up with a list of deficiencies in the facilities, also asked MARD to prepare a similar list for comparison.