PRIME Minister Baburam Bhattarai has instructed the Tribhuvan
University vicechancellor to resolve the issue of TU Teaching
Hospital and ‘persuade Dr Bhagawan Koirala to withdraw his resignation’. In a
tweet on Monday, PM Bhattarai informed that the government had also provided a
sum of Rs 50 million to TUTH to
overcome the financial problem. He has called for joint efforts to resolve
the problems instead of engaging in a blame game. The prime minister’s tweet
comes in the wake Dr Koirala’s resignation as the TUTH executive director on
Friday. Dr Koirala had stated that non-cooperation from “department heads” and
lack of financial support from the government forced him to quit.
Writing on Facebook on Monday, Dr Koirala said that “the University Teacher’s
Association and unions showed resentment with [my] tight regulations. It became
extremely painful when some ‘leaders’ and ‘clean’ professors started justifying
patient referrals out of the Hospital.” When he got the charge of the hospital,
said Dr Koirala, it had over Rs 660 million in negative balance and he was
assured of financial support by the government, which never materialised. He
further stated that “the authority to make decisions on financial and
administrative matters had always been seized by the TU’s central office, going
against government rules and regulations”. He also mentioned that a precondition
he had set before taking charge of the hospital was giving more financial and
administrative authority to the Institute of Medicine (IoM),
the TUTH governing body. Dr Koirala stated that working full time in the TUTH
cardiac surgical programme along with an administrative job became the “final
tipping factor”. However, he will continue to run the
Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery at Manmohan Cardiothoracic
Vascular and Transplant Centre. Meanwhile, over 100 TUTH officials staged a
sit-in on Monday outside the IoM office demanding that Dr Koirala’s resignation
not be accepted.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
Post a Comment