Assess PEs Thoroughly

PUBLIC enterprises have stood out as viable development collaborates in many developing countries. The public enterprises had been established with the modest objective of serving the people when the private sector was in its incipient stage. With the wave of industrialisation and globalisation picking up in many developing countries, the role of the public enterprises was minimised after the private sector emerged as a capable service provider. Many public enterprises then failed to live up to the aspirations of the general people in the wake of stiff competition.

The public enterprises failing to keep abreast with the open and market oriented economies witnessed a pitfall with the flow of time. The vicissitudes witnessed by the public enterprises in Nepal reveal that they too have faced the test of time with increased competition and requirement to upgrade the state of their services. Nepal adopted a liberal and market oriented economic policy in the nineties after the restoration of democracy. The government’s policy to encourage the private sector in different service industries brought about radical changes in the quality of services. The efficiency of the public enterprises started to decrease in the absence of programmes to improve their management.

Poor management, over staffing and the lack of a viable plan to make their services competitive have been attributed as the negative factors that have questioned the existence of the public enterprises. To make matters worse, the public enterprises turned into recruiting grounds for the workers of the political parties. Frequent changes in the management contributed to add confusion thereby adversely affecting the output of the public enterprises. With the annual earnings of these enterprises going down every year, the government is now facing a dilemma whether to let them carry on with their operations or to shut them down completely.

Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat has finally revealed the harsh reality relating to the causes behind the deplorable state of the public enterprises. Addressing the conference of the Nepal Trade Union Congress, Mahat said that the conditions of the HMG owned corporations were worsening because of political interference, weak management and widespread corruption. Now that the harsh reality has been accepted, the government needs to make a thorough assessment of the public enterprises. The ones that stand a chance of survival must be given an opportunity to improve their performance. As for the public enterprises that have reached the point of no return, the government must initiate a transparent mechanism for their privatisation. This alone can lessen the burden on the government’s exchequer.

Upgrading Medical Facilities

WITH a view to provide necessary angiogram services to heart patients visiting the Martyr Gangalal National Heart Centre to avail of its specialised medical services and care, the old and new catheterisation laboratories were inaugurated the other day in its premises. Similarly, to give more facility to the attendants of the patients undergoing treatment in the Centre, two old and new 20-bed houses were also inaugurated. The opening of the catheterisation laboratories and the lodging facilities for the attendants of the patients admitted to the Centre is, undoubtedly, in keeping with the government’s plan to gradually upgrade the existing hospitals’ health services, facilities and infrastructure. This, in turn, is expected to enable more citizens to take recourse to easily accessible, affordable and qualitative specialised medical services and care. The upgrading of the Centre’s existing facilities and infrastructure, against the backdrop of the revelation of a survey conducted at the hospitals in the capital city and released during the inaugural function, can be said to be timely. According to the survey, about five per cent of the nation’s 24 million people are said to be suffering from heart disease. This figure, indeed, is quite a disconcerting in that the nation has yet to avail health delivery services and care to all its citizens due to the lack of adequate resources and medical manpower. The more so to the people residing in the rural areas. For, they not only comprise the vast majority of the nation’s population but, due to the lack of medical health delivery facilities such as health centres/clinics in their localities, they are cut-off from even general health care and delivery facilities, what to speak of specialised medical treatment and care centres. More worrying to note is that most of the specialised medical treatment and care facilities are either concentrated in urban centres or located in areas that are quite inaccessible to the people who need them most—herein, the rural folks. While the need for the government to avail specialised medical treatment facilities to all by coming up with requisite initiatives is always there, since the Martyr Gangalal National Health Centre is the only specialised hospital that is meeting the treatment needs of the rising number of heart patients in the country, it goes without saying that until the establishment of more such Centres, its own heart-related treatment and care facilities should be progressively upgraded.