Mamata Banerjee announces free treatment for West Bengal citizens

West Bengal : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that only the people of the state can enjoy free treatment in state-run government hospitals. Some facilities will only be provided to the citizen of the state and people from other state cannot avail them.

“Free treatment at government hospitals is unique in Bengal but we have noticed that people from some neighbouring states and even neighbouring countries come here to avail of this facility. Given the financial constraints of the state it is not possible to provide free treatment at government hospitals, to people coming from other states and countries,” Mamata said while addressing sixth convention of West Bengal University of Health Sciences on Thursday. 

Chief Minister said that a special card would be issued to residence of Bengal who will be allowed to avail free treatment facilities at state-run hospitals. She also added that withdrawal of free treatment facility did not mean that patients from other countries or states would be refused treatment at government hospitals.

Sources mentioned that on an average 20% of patients would get free treatment at government-run hospitals from other states and countries. They said that most people come from Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern parts of UP, Bangladesh and Nepal to avail treatment in Bengal. Many of the patients are labourers and daily wage earners who have availed free medical treatment given to them.

Mamata Banerjee also took interest to criticise the union HRD ministry over the question paper failure in NEET examination 2018. “Many of the questions were not available in Bengali script. In some cases there were fewer question papers compared to the number of examinees. I have already written to the Union HRD Minister protesting against it,” she said.