Ranchi : Cabinet boost to health sector, nod to 1300 plus posts of doctors, nurses

Ranchi: In a significant boost to the ailing health sector in Jharkhand facing an acute manpower crunch, the state cabinet on Tuesday sanctioned around 1,300 posts of doctors and medical practitioners across medical colleges and hospitals.

State health minister Ramchandra Chandravanshi said a major chunk of the posts of doctors were sanctioned for PMCH in Dhanbad and MGM in Jamshedpur.

“For PMCH, a total of 513 doctors were sanctioned while for MGM, the cabinet approved the hiring of 713 doctors,” said Chandravanshi, adding that additional posts were sanctioned separately for the upcoming superspecialty wing of PMCH. “For that we created and sanctioned 77 new posts of doctors, mainly specialists for different wings,” he said.

About 12 sub-divisional hospitals run by the government too will get manpower. “As many as 288 posts have been created across the board from doctors to nurses, helpers etc for the first time,” said the minister.

To streamline the functioning of Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims) in Ranchi, the cabinet also decided separate administrative work and medical activities. “So we have created three new posts — additional directors of administration and finance and deputy director of finance at Rims. Rims director will solely be focussing on the health aspect while the administrative side will be dealt separately. It will ease some burden on doctors and allow them to focus on offering quality services,” Chandravanshi said.

In another significant decision, the cabinet also decided to extend gas connections to women under the Centre’s Ujwala scheme for all ration card holders in the state. As per the state food and civil supplies department data, there are about 57 lakh people with valid ration cards. Of these, 26 lakh were covered under the scheme.

“The main criteria for this is that any beneficiary should have a prior gas connection,” said state food and civil supplies minister Saryu Rai. “For this, funds worth Rs 45 crore were sanctioned in the supplementary budget. For next fiscal, budgetary provision of Rs 150 crore has been earmarked,” informed Rai.

A total of 20 proposals were cleared in the cabinet meeting today, some of which included nod to formation of State and district level fire arms bureau under The Arms Rules, 2016, for proper disposal of seized weapons, transfer of 12.50 acre land to Central Coalfields Limited on payment of around Rs 24 crore for the company’s plan of setting up of medical college among others.