Thrifty babus put injured constable's flight on hold

Mumbai: More than 24 hours after Chief minister Ashok Chavan's announcement on Saturday that Narayan Pardhe, a policeman who sustained critical cervical spine injury in the accident involving the CM's convoy in Nanded on Saturday, would be shifted to a Mumbai hospital in an air ambulance, the patient continues to languish at Nanded government hospital.
The reason? Non-availability of charter aircraft in the region on Sunday would mean hiring an air-ambulance at double of what it would have cost on a working day.
"When we got a call for an air ambulance to fly a patient from Nanded to Mumbai at 5.30 pm on Saturday we told them about non-availability of aircraft in the city and the surrounding region. The only option would have been to fly an aircraft from Delhi to Nanded and then to Mumbai,'' says Pradip Thampi, director (administration) of India Aeromedical Services. The other problem was the lack of night-landing facility in Nanded airport, which meant flight operations could only be conducted during the day.
On Saturday night, top officials including , the Nanded collector, the orthopaedic surgeon attending to the patient and DIG (administration), Mumbai, were in constant touch with the air-ambulance operator. "They were all very helpful and said cost was not the criteria. The collector issued directions to the Nanded air traffic control, while the DIG said that he would make a cheque payment on Sunday . Generally charter operators take an advance payment, but in this case as the CM was involved we said even a Monday payment would be fine,'' he adds.
"It was then decided that a Pilatus PC-12 air ambulance with our three doctors, ventilator, oxygen cylinders and other life-saving equipment would take off from Delhi at 5.30 am on Sunday and reach Nanded at 8.45 am. From there, it was to take off at 9.30 am with the patient and reach Mumbai at 11.10 am,'' says Thampi. A ground ambulance waiting at the airport was to rush the patient to a city hospital . "After the flight, the aircraft has to return to its base in Delhi. The total flying time for this operation would have been 8.30 hours. The cost worked out to Rs 12 lakh, which included the 12.36% service tax. A similar flight on Monday or other week days, when aircraft are readily available in Mumbai, would have cost Rs 5 lakh as the total flying time would have been less,'' he added.
Then at 1 am on Sunday morning the secretary of superintendent of Nanded police called the air ambulance operator and cancelled the flight. "Since I hadn't interacted with this secretary, I called up the other officials to confirm the cancellation . They too were unaware of this development,'' says Thampi. It was later known that another chartered aircraft operator had offered to carry out the evacuation for Rs 9 lakh, a neat Rs 4 lakh less, so some bureaucrats decided to cancel the first order and paid the second operator the said amount in cash on Saturday itself. But the second operator could not get an air ambulance on Sunday and so the evacuation did not take place. The patient is now expected to be airlifted on Monday.
15/12/08 Manju V/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Dec 2008