Nitish Kumar for funds to hospitals for humanitarian duties

PATNA: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today stressed on providing additional funds to hospitals to carry out humanitarian duties like assisting the poor who cannot arrange ambulance to carry dead body home.

"The Health department has to draw specific guidelines and provide additional funds to hospitals for such cases where a poor does not get an ambulance and is not in a position to afford private ambulance," Kumar told reporters.

He was answering a question concerned with sorry plight of a destitute woman in Muzaffarpur whose body was being pulled inside a garbage cart to be taken for post-mortem at Shri Krishna Memorial College and Hospital (SKMCH) in Muzaffarpur last week.

"The Health department needs to make available resources to hospitals for discharging humanitarian duties like arranging ambulance to carry dead body home and other assistance," the CM said.

Last year, policemen in Vaishali district of Bihar were photographed dragging a dead body hundreds of metres after tying a rope around the body's neck. In the absence of an ambulance, the policemen were spotted taking out the dead body from river Ganga using rope.

Expressing concern over such "humanitarian" issues, Kumar stressed on equipping hospitals with additional fund to help needy arrange an ambulance or other kinds of assistance.

"Earlier, in the state condition of police stations were like this. Policemen would flex muscles to use a vehicle for moving even undertrials for production in a court," he said with state DGP P K Thakur sitting by his side.

"The policemen would move in a 'Thelco' jeep (poor condition jeep which could be started only by pushing the vehicle). The criminals would come to know about movement of policemen due to jarring sound of the vehicle," he said.

"My government looked into the problem and armed police stations with sufficient fund to end problem arising for want of fund," he said.