108 Ambulance Service badly hit in Nizamabad

The 108 ambulance service is in doldrums in Nizamabad district. Apart from fund crunch and fuel shortage woes, pruning of staff has hit the services badly.  

So much so that the services of 108 ambulance have been suspended during the night while a few vehicles are attending to emergency calls in the day. Sources said petrol bunk owners are refusing to fill diesel in the vehicles since they did not receive the payments for about one week.

Rs 2,000 gets credited for each vehicle towards fuel charges every day with Bharat Petroleum bunks in Nizamabad district online from Hyderabad, sources added. However, the petrol bunk owners refused to fill diesel in 108 vehicles on the grounds that they haven't received payments.

Following district collector D Varaprasad's intervention, the bunk owners started filling fuel. Of the 26 ambulances in the district, eight vehicles are now supplied diesel from the bunks.

On the other hand, GVK-EMRI (Emergency Management and Research Institute), which runs the project with the assistance of the state government, is trying to prune the staff as part of its cost- cutting measures. About 200 employees have already been removed and issued notices in this regard.

Sources said the project is also facing fund problems. District project officer Jayanth Thakur refused to comment on this, while efforts to reach regional manager Mohd Rafi failed.