Bengaluru, June 27 (IANS) Senior BJP leader and Leader of the Opposition R. Ashoka on Saturday launched a scathing attack on the Congress government in Karnataka, alleging that despite changes in the Chief Minister and the Health Minister, the condition of the state’s Health Department has remained unchanged due to the government’s “negligence, inefficiency and anti-people governance.”

In a statement, Ashoka said the Health Department itself was now “in the ICU” and claimed that as many as 35,196 posts remain vacant in the department.

Urging the government to act immediately, Ashoka demanded that all 35,196 vacant posts in the Health Department be filled without delay and that the pending salaries of “Namma Clinic” employees be released immediately.

He warned that if the government failed to meet these demands, the Karnataka BJP would launch a statewide agitation against what he described as an “anti-people government playing with the health of the poor.”

He alleged that government hospitals have been reduced to mere namesakes and have become centres of multiple problems. According to him, there are not enough personnel to attend to patients arriving for emergency treatment during the night, and poor patients are being forced to move from one hospital to another due to the shortage of even basic medicines such as paracetamol.

Ashoka also alleged that the Congress government’s “Namma Clinic” initiative, which was launched to provide healthcare services to the poor and daily wage workers, has been neglected. He claimed that doctors, nurses and other staff working in the clinics have not received their salaries for the past three months.

“Does a government that cannot even pay salaries to its employees have the moral right to continue in office?” he questioned.

The BJP leader further alleged that the Congress government had emptied the state treasury in the name of its guarantee schemes and had pushed the Health Department into an “ICU-like” condition.

It may be noted that Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara on Friday announced that the state government has directed all departments to prepare recruitment notifications for filling 72,000 vacant posts, and two senior IAS officers have been appointed to monitor and expedite the process.

“Before coming to power, we had promised in our election manifesto that we would fill 1.50 lakh vacant government posts in a phased manner. The process was delayed due to various reasons, the major one being the issue of internal reservation.”

He said the government had constituted a commission headed by Justice H.N. Nagamohan Das (Retd) to examine the issue of internal reservation. “After the commission submitted its report, the government took a decision on internal reservation, clearing the way for recruitment,” he said.

–IANS

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