Government health institutions in Jharkhand are hobbling with the help of 20,000 outsourced employees who don’t get paid for months on end, even as the government absolves itself of the responsibility by saying it pays agencies and not outsourced employees.

Right to information (RTI) activist Sarwesh Kumar Singh said the Jharkhand government at present owes a whopping Rs 80 crore to over 20,000 health employees outsourced from agencies. To this, health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni said paying outsourced employees every month wasn’t the government’s job. The government, “early or late” pays the agency concerned in bulk, but ensuring a pay day every month was the agency’s responsibility, Kulkarni said.

Speaking to The Telegraph, RTI activist Singh said this sorry state of affairs demanded an urgent look into the entire system of outsourcing health staff, which came into existence seven years ago in Jharkhand.

“The government owes over Rs 80 crore to over 20,000 outsourced employees who run numerous health institutions in all 24 districts. In Dhanbad district alone, the money due is Rs 31 crore,” Singh said. “As a result, outsourced health staff don’t get paid for months on end. They suffer, and it is only fair to assume that healthcare suffers.”

The RTI activist added that outsourced manpower included security and paramedic staff, housekeepers, drivers and sweepers and others.

“They get anything ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000,” added Singh.

Health secretary Kulkarni, while admitting the fact, said the government couldn’t be blamed. “Agencies are selected on the basis of their credentials to maintain their staff. Early or late, the government pays the agencies. Thus it is the duty of the agency concerned to pay their employees on time. One should not blame the state government. If the agency can’t pay their staff regularly, there must be something wrong in the credentials it had given the government in order to bag the work order,” Kulkarni said.

Nawal Kumar, owner of Commando Security, an agency headquartered in Ranchi, which works in six places including Jamtara, shared their practical problem.

“Agencies have limited money in hand. If the government delays payment by two to three months, we can manage, but more than that affects regular payment to staff. The government does not pay us regularly. So agencies, which win bids (government tenders) by giving competitive rates, have problems in paying their staff. The government cannot pass the buck on the agencies. Take my example. My agency got paid by the government only for five months while we are rendering our services for the last 16 months in Jamtara,” Kumar said.

According to the RTI activist, Dhanbad apart, the other districts where the government owes money are Jamtara (Rs 5.5 crore), Garhwa (Rs 4.95 crore), Lohardaga (Rs 6.11 crore), Ramgarh (Rs 1.10 crore), Sahebganj (Rs 1.19 crore), Bokaro (Rs 3.85 crore) and Godda (Rs 7 crore).