M A I N   N E W S

Staff, fund crunch blunts Punjab fight against drugs
Ruchika M. Khanna
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 29
The Punjab government seems to be acting in haste in dealing with the problem of drug addiction across the state. Rather than tightening noose on the drug lords, the drive against addicts is targeted more at the small drug consumers. The state is also faltering in having an effective drug de-addiction and rehabilitation programme.

Special focus on deaddiction centres  Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday reviewed the progress of  rehabilitation centres for drug addicts He asked the National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) to hand over  pre-fabricated buildings to the health department within three months  The CM also gave his nod for recruitment of paramedical staff, including male nurses, pharmacists, ward attendants and social workers.

Various state-run drug de-addiction centres have reportedly run out of medicines. They do not have adequate staff to deal with the huge rush of drug users. Most of the centres do not have enough financial resources to meet their monthly expenses. In some of these centres, there are no funds to even provide food to the drug users.

Though the state government is in the process of opening 22 rehabilitation centres in all districts and make them operational within the next three months, a survey conducted by The Tribune team revealed poor state of affairs of these drug de-addiction centres.

Most of the centres do have a regular psychiatrist on call, who can talk to the patients and help in their rehabilitation. In many centres, the posts of counselor are lying vacant for months. Interestingly, the government claims that 70,000 drug consumers have availed the de-addiction facilities available free of cost in the state.

At Government and Red Cross De-addiction Centre of Bathinda, there is no permanent doctor. It has a retired doctor, who, too, is working part time. In the absence of any paramedical staff, the centre has not seen any new admission since March. The de-addiction centre at the Civil Hospital has not received any financial assistance.

The de addiction centre at Talwandi Sabo has no paramedical staff and no funds to provide food and medicines to the needy. Similar is the story in Mansa, where one centre run by the Red Cross has no patients because it has no money to provide medicines, while another at civil hospital is now closed.

The only centre running at Khyala has only four patients. The centre has no counselor.

Interestingly, the health department in Bathinda has suddenly discontinued de-addiction camps being run in rural areas since Friday. Doctors involved say that they received e-mails and SMSes telling them to discontinue the camps without ascribing any reasons. It is believed that the reason for this is the huge consumption of medicines being provided free of cost at these camps which the health department failed to sustain. In Amritsar, Swami Vivekanand De-addiction Centre at the Government Medical College, the only government centre, is facing staff crunch even as the inflow of patients has increased manifold. The number of OPD patients here has swelled to 400 daily as against 200 a day before the drive against addicts was launched.

In Faridkot too, the high-decibel campaign of the health department to combat drug addiction seems to be mere rhetoric.

(With inputs from Bharat Khanna and Gurdeep Singh in Bathinda, PK Jaiswar in Amritsar, Balwant Garg in Faridkot, Aparna Banerji in Jalandhar, Manav Mander in Ludhiana, Sanjiv Kumar Bakshi in Hoshiarpur, Gagan K. Teja in Patiala).