A hospital in Bengaluru’s Jayanagar meant to treat long-time employees of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation may soon be privatised, the employees have alleged. The workers’ union has alleged that Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya is exerting pressure on the government to privatise the hospital and set up a kidney dialysis centre in its place.

Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) Staff and Workers Union President H.V. Anantha Subbarao on Monday has alleged that young parliamentarian Tejasvi Surya is exerting pressure on Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Transport Minister Sriramulu and officials to privatise the government hospital dedicated to the RTC staff. According to him, thousands of employees have availed treatment there since decades for a subsidised price. "Once a driver completes 30 years of service in KSRTC, he develops certain body ailments which need special attention. He gets the special treatment in the present set-up. The plan to privatise the hospital is being done only to assuage a section of the voters,” he alleged.

Subbarao alleged that Tejasvi Surya plans to lease out the hospital to the Vasavi Group for a period of 30 years, in order to set up a dialysis centre. "Tejasvi Surya wants to set up a private dialysis centre for a sum of Rs 80 lakh and said that RTC workers can shell out money to avail treatment elsewhere. We will protest this fiercely, as the hospital provides adequate treatment for thousands of workers. We need better facilities, we have asked for a bigger hospital but they will never agree to this. They (the government) can give us the funds to set up a dialysis unit here itself, we have the ability and we can do it. But I think Tejasvi Surya has approached the Vasavi Group to increase his political influence,” Subbarao alleged. 

While the union has stated that the move to privatise the hospital will be met with strong opposition, Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya has said that he is not trying to lease out the hospital and denied exerting pressure on the government for the same. 

With IANS inputs