SAMBALPUR: Collection of fee for parking vehicles on Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VIMSAR) premises has led to resentment among the patients and public.The hospital authorities have notified parking charges for different vehicles with different time slabs. As per the new rule, a bicycle would be charged `2 for six hours while three-wheeler drivers will have to pay `20. Bikes will be charged `5 for four hours while `50 has been fixed for four-wheelers for eight hours.
Though the amount might seem small, for thousands of poor patients across Western Odisha, the cumulative amount is huge. Imposition of such a rule on hospital premises has not gone down well with the visitors who have charged the administration with filling up its coffers at the cost of poor.
Attendants said charging parking fee from visitors whose relatives are admitted in the hospital is unjustified. In such cases, parking fee is adding to their financial burden. Moreover, with ambulance service remaining irregular, the charges are an additional expense for the poor patients who arrange private vehicles to shift patients to the hospital under difficult circumstances. Going by the daily footfall, the fee has become a new source of revenue for the hospital.
As each patient needs at least one attendant at a time, every attendant is bound to pay parking fee for the entire day. An agonised attendant said, “the hospital authorities should understand that we are not coming here for amusement. Such insensitivity shows how they are trying to take advantage of our situation.”
A source at the hospital said VIMSAR had reserve fund earlier but it was done away with some time back after which fund collection has become a tough task for the hospital. To manage the situation, the hospital authorities took the decision to charge parking fee. When this rule was started the last time in the hospital, the then director Ashwini Pujahari had ordered that the practice should be stopped immediately after it came to his notice.Meanwhile, some social groups, who approached the hospital authorities seeking revocation of parking fee, have returned disappointed. Other Government hospitals like SCB Medical in Cuttack and Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar are not charging parking fee.