Employees stir; BRS turns the mic up

Employees called it first. According to a published programme, the TGEJAC has statewide protests on August 27 and a Hyderabad mahadharna on September 10 if the list of long-pending issues — EHS implementation, PRC, DA arrears, bills and the Old Pension System — isn’t moved on. BRS has now said it will stand with them, with former minister V. Srinivas Goud asking why EHS deductions are being taken while hospitals won’t honour them — his allegation, on the record at a press meet.

Here’s what the government has actually put on paper: orders creating an Employees Health Care Trust, reconstituting its board, and deducting 1.5% of basic pay or pension for the fund. What it hasn’t put out publicly in the accessible material: the operational start order everyone is arguing about, an empanelled-hospitals list, package rates, beneficiary counts, or claims paid. The Congress government running Telangana says it revamped EHS; it can start by publishing the revamp.

Hospitals have their own stand. In July, the private network association said CGHS-linked rates and unpaid dues made the new scheme unworkable, and reports put total pending hospital bills at roughly Rs 2,600 crore, including old EHS. That’s not a whisper campaign; it is the bill stack people keep tripping over.

Two political facts this doesn’t change. One, the BJP-led Centre is missing in action on a state employee health mess it would happily sermonise about anywhere else. Two, the Congress government in Telangana has not bothered to answer the employees with documents that settle the basics — which hospitals, which packages, how many beneficiaries, how many claims paid. Publish the list, or own the queue outside the protest venue.