BENGALURU/KALABURAGI:Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said that the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) will take up the responsibility of running and maintaining the hospital and medical college built by the corporation at Kalaburagi.
Dattatreya, in a letter to his cabinet colleague M Venkaiah Naidu, has said that the Labour ministry had taken a final call on the issue keeping public good in mind.
This ends the uncertainty over running the Rs 2,000 crore-worth hospital and medical college which was inaugurated over a year back. While the ESIC wanted the state government to take up the responsibility, the latter was reluctant citing financial constraints.
Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha member Basavaraj Patil Sedam, who hails from Kalaburagi district, had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in the matter. Modi in turn asked Naidu to discuss the issue with Dattatreya.
History
The ESIC Medical College of Kalaburagi commenced functioning in 2013-14. Trouble started in the beginning of this year with the announcement of deputy medical commissioner (ME-II) Vivek Handa that ESIC at its 163rd meeting on December 4, 2014, had decided to exit the field of medical education since it was not its core function. It was decided at the meeting that ESIC should not undertake further admissions to medical colleges and other medical educations (PG, nursing, para-medical and dental) nor start new medical colleges.
All ongoing medical education programmes may continue till the students pass out or (they) are adjusted according to provisions of the Essentiality Certificate issued by the state government, whichever is earlier, the meeting decided. It was also decided that ESIC will hand over its medical colleges and other medical education institutions having separate infrastructure to the state governments willing for such a transfer.
The staff and the student community staged a protest and sent memorandums to the labour minister to reconsider the decision. Even Kalaburagi MP Mallikarjun Kharge pleaded strongly to the labour minister, PM and the President of India.
The state sent a letter to the labour minister to reconsider the move, failing which, the state was ready to run the college. Dattatreya, who visited Kalaburagi in the first week of July, did not make any commitment.