Health minister approves new tender committee for handing over emergency services

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMay 17, 2024

The state government has approved a new tender committee for handing over the emergency services to a new company.

Informing this on Friday, Health Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said, “Today I have approved the new tender committee and this time, we should do things correctly.”

She said it was unfortunate that the tender floated for 108 emergency services did not go well last year.

“All these lacunas, which have resulted post tender in the last two tenders that were called should reoccur. We regret that it has happened but we should not regret and not take action,” the minister added.

Asked, Lyngdoh said, “Right now NHM is running it. Employees are quite satisfied but unfortunately NHM is not the correct forum to run the 108 emergency services.”

Expressing concern over worker rights, she said recently, there were two different incidents where our workers met with serious accidents; one of them is already certified as disabled.

“He has no benefit, post service benefits, no security, no insurance, this cannot go on like this. I feel very bad for the workers. In fact we are zeroing down on what we need to do for these two workers, who are now unable to go back to work. Had there been a functional company running the EMRI services, these workers would have benefitted,” Lyngdoh said while assuring that she is engaging with the government to see what will be the best thing to do for these kinds of individuals. “Worker rights are being violated as we are not a fully functional, no authorized agency to run the 108 services,” she added.