HYDERABAD: Citing controversial statements of Director of Public Health (DPH) G Srinivasa Rao, the Forum for Good Governance (FGG) on Tuesday requested Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari to shift him from the post. In a letter to the chief secretary, the FGG said that the DPH is giving statements violating the code of conduct of a government servant.
At an event organised to celebrate Christmas, he stated that Covid-19 is controlled in the State because of the grace of God and not because of the mass vaccination programme of the government. “It is nothing but insulting the massive vaccination programme taken up by the government,” Padmanabha Reddy, secretary of FGG said in the letter.
In the past, the DPH also stated that as he belongs to the Bhadrachalam area, he had grown up under the influence of Naxalites holding gun and mistakenly took a stethoscope. “If I were to hold gun, I would have been killed by this time,” the latter quoted the DPH as saying on February 12.
The third statement referred by FGG was the one made on April 17 during an Iftar party, after offering Namaz along with Muslims, where the DPH said that his grandfather once took him, after he was injured, to a masjid, where a moulana tied him a ‘tayath’. He claimed that the wound healed and he recovered within a few days and today he is in the post of director because of divine power, the letter said.
“Rao is holding the post of DPH, but his statements send wrong signals about medical and health activities of the government. If he has no faith in modern medicine, he is unfit to hold the post of director, “ the letter said.“There are a lot of stories making rounds that he is likely to enter politics and all his controversial statements and acts are meant to be in the limelight even if they are in bad taste,” it further said.