Gorakhpur hospital wanted commission raised from 10 to 12% 

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, accompanied by the Union health minister J.P. Nadda, visited the BDR Medical College Hospital at Gorakhpur on Sunday. This was Yogi’s third visit to the hospital since July. And he used the occasion to announce that no person held guilty for the death of 72 children ( the tally as on Sunday afternoon according to various media reports), allegedly due to oxygen supply drying up for non-payment, would be spared.

But even as the Principal of the college, Dr Rajeev Mishra, resigned owning moral responsibility ( he was suspended, says the state’s health minister Siddharth Nath Singh), more details of gross mismanagement are coming to light. Local news portal Gorakhpurnewsline.com reported that despite visits by the CM, the Chief Secretary, the Health Secretary and the District Magistrate, a large number of employees have not paid their salary since March this year.

The hospital, reported patients and their attendants, lacked cleanliness and hygienic conditions with unusable toilets and shortage of water as well. While the Yogi Government went after illegal abbatoirs, they complained, pigs have been allowed to breed, grow and stay around the hospital.

Dispute over commission led to oxygen supply being cut off

The BRD Medical college has its own oxygen plant with a 12,000 litretank. On an average the hospital required 8,000 litre of oxygen per week. One-time supply costs the hospital Rs 2.5 lakh, sources maintained.

It has now come to light that refusal by the supplier to raise ‘commission’ (the illegal bribe paid for every contract and payment) from 10% to 12% led to the stoppage of payment, finally forcing the supplier to inform the college that it would no longer be able to supply oxygen.

A payment of Rs 68 lakh was apparently due to the supplier, of which a part payment of Rs21 lakh is said to have been made on Saturday.

Lucknow based Pushpa Sales Pvt Ltd had repeatedly written letters to the hospital administration to clear its dues but hospital administrators were demanding a higher commission than last year.

A senior official of the company confided that there was an unwritten understanding that company would pay 10 per cent commission. But this year the hospital administration was asking for 12 per cent commission.

“This was a huge amount which we refused to part with. Our argument was that since we were paying 10 per cent commission for each payment there was no ground to increase it. We even argued that during monsoon, the number of encephalitis cases would go up, leading to higher supply of liquid oxygen and hence higher commissions to them,” he added on condition of anonymity.

As the payments were delayed the company wrote a letter to the District Magistrate, Gorakhpur on June 3 with a request to clear the dues at the earliest. Sources claim the DM had spoken to the hospital administration about it and had received an assurance that the issue would be settled.

The company had also written a letter to DG Health earlier on April 12 when the due was Rs 55 lakh. A legal notice was also served to BRD College on July 30 but the hospital administration did not respond.

At a press conferencethe Medical Education Minister Ashutosh Tandon confirmed that arrear of Pushpa Sales had gone up to Rs 68.65 lakh and questioned why the BDR Medical College Hospital did not make the payment when the DG Health had already released Rs 4 crore to the college. But he did not say anything on the climthat the company had also written a letter to him – to which he did not respond.