VIJAYAWADA: The committee which probed the Swarna Palace fire mishap that claimed the lives of 10 patients, found serious lapses on the part of the Ramesh Hospitals management in running the paid Covid care centre from the hotel premises.
Apart from the two committees set up by the State government to probe the fire mishap, the Krishna district administration also constituted a committee to ascertain the reasons that led to the mishap. The committee comprising Joint Collector L Shiva Shankar, Vijayawada Sub-Collector, CMHO, Regional Fire Officer and Electrical Inspector, submitted its report to the State government recently.
“Ramesh Hospitals has violated all the rules and regulations,” the committee stated in its report. The committee found that the hospital management ignored Covid-19 guidelines issued by the government from time to time intentionally. The hospital had treated patients with plasma therapy without getting any permission from the authorities concerned. According to the report, the sole aim of the hospital seemed to be making money. The management violated the guidelines issued by the District Medical and Health Officer (DM&HO) and got people, who suspected that they might have contracted the virus, and also people who tested negative in the Covid-19 test, admitted to the hospital, the report said, holding it responsible for the loss of 10 lives in the fire mishap.
Further, the committee found that Ramesh Hospitals did not take into consideration whether Swarna Palace is having adequate fire safety norms or not before converting it into a Covid care centre. The centre was started on the hotel premises even before the government gave permission to run it. The hospital had also run Covid care centres from M5 and Metropolitan Hotels without getting any permissions, the panel said. It also found that the Covid care centre was started even before signing an MoU with the hotel management.
Violating the Covid protocol in treating patients, the hospital had administered the costly Remdesivir drug to patients of all categories, the report stated.On permissions and fire safety at Swarna Palace, the committee found that it lacked a No Objection Certificate from the Fire Services Department and adequate safety measures to avert fire mishaps.
The hotel with a height of 19.4 metres was running in a most crowded area in the city for the past 12 years without following any rules and regulations. It did not even have the Building Occupancy Certificate and evaded taxes to the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation and its tax dues to the VMC amounted to `33.69 lakh, the probe panel stated.
