The Rangpur Medical College Hospital authorities recently transferred 16 support staff as punishment for violating discipline and harassing service seekers by extorting money in the name of tips or gratuity. However, aides of the transferred officials are continuing to conduct irregularities.
According to Rangpur MCH employees and police, some of the punished staff members have multiple murder cases filed against them, while others have been suspended for a long time.
The ring of corrupt staff members used to charge Tk250 instead of Tk25 for admission to the emergency department, while also demanding Tk150-250 as tips for carrying patients on wheelchairs, trolleys, and stretchers. They would even demand tips for carrying dead bodies.
The syndicate also extorts patients during admission, handover of lab tests, and distribution of free medicine at the hospital.
During a visit to the hospital on Wednesday, it was found that the extortion was continuing despite the presence of a significant number of policemen.
Dr Shariful Hasan, a new director of Rangpur MCH, said the staff members facing action must join their new workplaces within seven days of the order being issued.
“There is no scope for canceling the transfer order,” he told Dhaka Tribune
Dr Shariful joined his post a month ago. He said he needs some time to eradicate deep-rooted corruption, stop irregularities, and ensure discipline to provide better services to patients.
Inhuman service
After a sick Mumtaz Miah from Nilphamari got down from an ambulance at the emergency department, two people took him on a trolley and demanded Tk150. As the relatives of the patient did not agree to pay the money immediately, they kept the patient lying on the trolley for half an hour.
They immediately left the scene with the trolley as soon as the police arrived. Later, the relatives carried Mumtaz to the medicine ward.
After ten days of treatment, elderly Akalima Bewa was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. Two women brought her down from the third floor in a trolley and demanded Tk300 from her relatives. They became locked in a loud argument at the hospital building’s entrance, as the relatives wanted to give at most Tk100.
The two staff members did not spare them until they were given Tk50 more.
When this correspondent spoke to one of the female staff members, Asma Begum, about the incident, she said the patients’ attendants usually provide tips. When asked about staff members forcing relatives of patients to give Tk300 in tips, the two support staff members quickly left the scene with the trolley.
At the children’s ward, Maina, a 10-year-old child from Kurigram, was suffering from pneumonia. Her mother said that the doctor had asked her to do some blood tests for her daughter, but when she went to the hospital's pathology department she found it completely closed.
The support staff member at the ward had asked her to do the tests from any of the other pathology laboratories around the hospital, she told Dhaka Tribune.
“They gave me another solution: workers of the labs will come to the ward to collect the blood and deliver the report in exchange for an additional amount, which they dubbed as a tip,” Maina’s mother added.
When asked about the matter, two nurses of the hospital said they were afraid and only agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
Pathological examination has remained suspended at the hospital for a long time, mainly because of collusion between employee’s union leaders and the lab staff.
The support staff have also paved the way for the brokers of private clinics to enter different wards and take away patients by offering various incentives.
This correspondent visited the medicine, gynecology, orthopedics, and surgery wards to speak with patients and their relatives. They said everything needed for their treatment – from needles and medical supplies to medicine – had to be bought from outside, causing the cost of treatment to rise.
