The free bus service on the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital campus is good to go to be suspended. The service was presented during the main Covid-19 wave to assist non-Covid patients and their family members who might have to go from one hospital complex to the next on the 110-acres of Civil campus. A neighborhood firm was entrusted with employing the four buses.
During the peak Covid period, the OPD ward would see an average of 500 cases daily and the emergency ward would receive 50 patients. Now, with Covid cases on a decline, the hospital has been seeing 3,500 OPD cases and 500 daily admissions of non-Covid patients. “It is now that people would use the bus service more. Why do they want to discontinue it?” asked an official.
Speculations are rife that suspending the bus service is just a ‘stunt’ so that the contract can allegedly be awarded to a firm favoured by a senior official of the health department and the service be reintroduced.
“While on one hand they are saying the free service will be stopped, on the other they began the tendering procedure for the same. However, even the tenders that were ineligible are being considered now. This is being done so that the free bus service contract can be awarded to the agency favoured by a senior health department official. A complaint in this regard has also been sent to the medical superintendent.”
