Letters to the Editor

Control medicine prices

Nowadays healthcare costs are rising rapidly. A very low per capita availability of doctors and other medical practitioners makes a bad situation worse. Increasing the number of medical seats will reduce the cost of medical education and make doctors less vulnerable to unethical profiteering. As the lack of competition from under-staffed, under-funded and over-crowded government hospitals adds to the problem, improving the government-run healthcare system will provide a real altertive to hapless patients, poor or rich.

That would require an increase in public spending on healthcare which is low in India at 1.4% of GDP compared to 3% in Chi and 4% in Brazil. It would further require cutting red tape, reining in corruption and fixing accountability in government hospitals, and the agencies and departments controlling them. Filly, it also makes sense for the government to directly procure medicines from pharma companies and distribute them through its 1,700 odd Jan Aushadhi outlets. That will bring down medicine prices substantially without the need for market distorting price controls.

Satish Kumar Sarma,

Kalyanpur, Bisath Chariali.

Faulty government job advertisements   

It has been observed to be a custom  of some government departments in advertising for various vacant posts, seeking applications and then subsequent corrigendum. Officials of the departments concerned are seen to be uncaring about trouble faced by the candidates and guardians while applying for the posts they advertise. The latest example of this is the advertisement given by the Office of Labour Commissioner for the posts of 'Junior Assistant'. The time frame for sending application to the office was given as fifteen days including organizatiol bandh and government holidays. The thousands of job aspirants (Jorhat alone) had lost one  entire day  to get a treasury receipt issued in origil due to heavy rush at the Treasury and bank, let alone the other photocopies of educatiol and age proof certificates. After nearly ten days had elapsed, the office has given a corrigendum with the rectification of Head of account for treasury receipt and application fee. There has been no indication about the applications already received by them. This is the result of lack of sincerity on the part of officials in  the department concerned. We appeal to the State government to instruct all departments on this matter so that advertisements are properly scrutinised before sending to the press for publication.

Biju Sarmah,

Jorhat-1.