SAHIWAL, Nov 28: A mushroom growth of clinical laboratories is visible by different sign-boards on road corners throughout the city. These laboratories provide facilities of blood, urine and many other tests recommended by doctors in the city. The clinics, run privately by qualified doctors, are considered complete only when clinical laboratories are also set up, within or adjoining to the clinic. These privately run hospitals, with operation theatre facilities and availability of rented rooms, are flocked with patients.
The main objective of these clinics, however, is to increase the income made by doctors instead of providing accurate diagnostic analysis of blood, urine and other samples. The patients are not even aware whether these clinics are adequately equipped or not. The patients also do not seem much concerned about the qualification of men handling the laboratories. The doctors who lack the facility of clinical laboratory at their clinics recommend the patient to get the test performed from particular laboratories, from whom they receive fixed commission. The lethargic health department of the Punjab government pays no attention to his problem. They also overlook the fact that doctors under government employment spend more time in private clinics rather than government hospitals, where they get handsome salaries.
It is the need of the hour that these laboratories be registered and registration made compulsory after the check of the available equipment needed for tests. No unregistered laboratory should be allowed to operate. Test fee being charged in these laboratories also differs in rates. The rates for each test should be set with provision of income tax to be paid by the clinical laboratory running physicians.
Specialist doctors charge heavy rates of fees from patients for their consultations. Operations carried out by these doctors are rated from Rs5,000 to Rs12,000 per operation. These prominent doctors usually examine 10 to 15 patients a day. They earn thousands of rupees per day but never pay taxes proportionate to their income. The employees of the department are under obligation for getting free treatment for self and family. Whenever an income tax officer disagrees with the declared income of an assessee, an officer is deputed to monitor the earning of the assessee. This is never done in the case of these doctors, who always dodge the department by filing returns of a few cases. In some cases, the highups of the income tax department themselves brief their family doctors of the ways and means to escape the net of the income tax law. How these malpractices will be checked is anybody’s guess.
ENCROACHMENTS: The width of city bazaars and roads has been narrowed by five to six feet each because shopkeepers have encroached upon the footpaths on both sides of the bazaars and roads. The usual width of footpath is 2.5 feet each, provided for use of pedestrians.
From Jogi Chowk to the overhead reservoir of water of MC Jirah Road, you cannot find footpaths on either side of the road. Similarly, you can go to Depalpur Bazaar, Pakpattan Bazaar, Furniture Bazaar, Ghas Mandi Bazaar, inside Sauri Gali and its outskirts, Saraffa Bazaar, Sharbat Bazaar, Urdu Bazaar, Jinnah Chowk, Pasha Street, Church Road, Pull Bazaar, Baan Bazaar, Railway Road and other roads and bazaars of the city, but you would never find any footpath available for use by the pedestrians. Vendors of different types are sitting and where there are no vendors, the shopkeepers have decorated their items on the footpaths. Instead of removing this menace, the ground rent staff of the local MC has arranged mutually beneficial deals with various shopkeepers. The pedestrians, on the other hand, are deprived of the use of the footpaths and hence use roads. This practice causes accidents, some of which are fatal. Tehsil council is reluctant to ask the encroachers to vacate the footpaths. Who would direct the local municipality to make some viable plan for vendors and wheel barrows? Eid rush is also adding to the sufferings of the commuters to city bazaars.