KARACHI, Sept 29: Labourers have expressed their dissatisfaction over the medical facilities being offered to them in the dispensaries of Sindh Employees Social Security Institution and alleged that majority of the medicines available in the dispensaries were substandard.

They also alleged that only the influential patients were referred to the hospitals for advanced treatment and those having no public relations were left with no option but to visit the dispensaries and get the same medicines repeatedly.

The SESSI has established dispensaries and hospitals in the main industrial areas, where hundreds of patients come for medical treatment daily.

Not only the patients visiting these dispensaries and hospitals complain about a number of problems they are faced with but doctors too at these health centres are perturbed demanding immediate attention of the authorities concerned.

In SITE and Orangi Town, the health centres established by the SESSI are: Madina dispensary, Orangi town dispensary; Javidan dispensary, Sher Shah dispensary, New Sher Shah dispensary, New Bawani dispensary, Labour Square dispensary, and a 335-bed K.V. Social Security SITE hospital. During visits to the healthcare centers it was observed that the patients were criticizing the doctors and vice versa.

Labour Square dispensary is located in the compound of the labourers’ residential flats opposite Masjid Gulzar Habib in Site. On an average 150 patients visit the dispensary.

Madina dispensary is situated at the main Banaras Chowrangi, which is accessible to maximum labourers and as such the daily influx of patients here is stated to be between 400 and 600.

The growth of wild plants and presence of dozens of unbridled stray dogs in the dispensary premises reflects indifferent attitude of the authorities concerned.

The dispensary staff said that they had time and again lodged complaints with the local government to get rid of the dogs, but so far no action had been taken in this regard.

The dispensary’s sewerage system has also failed. The overflowing sewage in corridors has become the breeding bed for mosquitoes and flies.

Besides, heaps of garbage lying at the permanently closed gate of the dispensary is another health hazard for the visitors. In the absence of garbage removal system, whenever the garbage is set ablaze its smoke directly enters into the dispensary building.

Similar is the situation at Orangi dispensary, situated at S.T-4 block-F, Sector-13, Orangi Town, where only two doctors have to examine from 400 to 500 patients daily.

The dispensary also has the problems of growing wild plants in its courtyard and stray dogs.

The medical officer while talking to Dawn said that the dispensary was not safe even from the drug addicts, who once entered the building in the recent past by scaling the boundary wall and took away the water tap and pipe.

He said that although a case had been registered with the local police and the boundary wall had been raised, addicts still attempted to enter the dispensary. “My main concern being the medical officer is protection of the medicines, which have been stored in the dispensary building,” he said.

New Bawani is another dispensary where around 400 patients get treatment daily while the number of doctors has recently risen to four only.

Sher Shah dispensary, situated near the Sher Shah bazaar, is running in a rented building and the average number of patients getting treatment there on daily basis is 150.

However, the KV Social Security SITE hospital is apparently in a better condition where about 14 departments headed by specialist doctors are functioning.

The 335-beded is situated at the main Manghopir Road opposite Pathan Colony, where other diagnostic facilities like ultrasound, X-ray, dialysis, laboratory and operation theaters are available.

When patients were interviewed, most of their complaints were regarding medicines.

While waiting in the long queues for their turn in front of the medicines store, some patients narrated their stories, but avoided to get their names published without permission of their employers. A patient, they alleged, was referred to another hospital only when he or she reached at the verge of collapse.

Some female patients telling their names as Nasreen, Khaperai, and Uzma said that they had been visiting the dispensaries and given the tablets, which could not be identified by others except the doctors at KV hospital.

Sixty-year-old Haider Zaman, resident of Abidabad Colony, told this reporter that he had been suffering from backache and kidney problems since long, but whenever he was referred by the dispensary doctors to the hospital for X-ray or other tests the hospital staff asked for chaai-paani (bribe).

“I am a poor retired labourer and unable to grease their palms,” Haider said. When he refused to pay cash, a staff member gave him the X-ray result of another patient, he said complaining that he has been given the same tablets since long and never referred to a private hospital for better treatment.

During the visit, a number of the SESSI’s employees talked to this reporter and expressed their reservations about the quality of the medicines. Some of them admitted that they did not like to use the ‘ineffective’ medicines of SESSI dispensaries and hospitals and had always tried to get their patients referred to any other hospital.

When Deputy Medical Superintendent of the KV Social Security Hospital Dr Zaheer Qureshi was contacted for comments, he termed the patients’ complaints just allegations and said that the SESSI had an organized programme for offering better health care facilities to the patients.

Medicines of local companies were provided in case of financial constraints and that too only at the end of June every year, he said.

The DMS counted a number of multinational companies which were in contract with the SESSI and said that if people had any complaint he was available there to redress the same.

RAISE DEMANDED: Labourers have demanded increase in the death grant and disablement pension.