Punjab's private drug rehab centres facing closure
Darpan News Desk IANS, 09 Feb, 2023 12:58 PM
Chandigarh, Feb 9 (IANS) The Punjab Drug Rehabilitation Centres Union (PDRCU) on Thursday sought intervention of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to review a policy of the previous Congress government that has brought such centres being run in the private sector to the verge of closure.
Members of the special committee set up by the PDRCU said they have given many representations to officials of the Health Department to revoke the policy.
Kunal Lakhanpal, a member of the committee, said: "In 2020 the then Congress government mandated that every rehab centre should have a psychiatrist, an MBBS doctor and a nurse on its payroll. It is illogical as no medicine is to be given at these centres. We admit people after detoxification. Such people are provided counselling. The idea is to make them mentally strong so that they don't fall prey to drugs again."
Another member said Angad Singh said that the policy lead to high operating costs, which "we cannot meet given the fact that we run small centres and the fee charged from patients is also bare minimum as the affected families, by and large, are poor".
Under the policy, some private rehab centres have already been served with closure notices. Some have even closed. There are cases where rehab centres have shifted from Punjab and set up bases in neighbouring states.
Another committee member Sanjeev Sharma said: "In case the policy is enforced in its current form, 74 private rehab centres will be shut down."
Mann said most of the time they had to run pillar to post for getting their work done. The Chief Minister said this dedicated cell will be a single-window platform for the persons with disabilities to avail the benefits of these schemes.
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The Customs department has seized as many as 45 hand guns from two passengers -- both Indian nationals, here at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, an official said on Wednesday. The guns were seized from Jagjit Singh and his wife Jaswinder Kaur, who arrived here from Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) on July 11 along with their infant daughter.
Mann said this facility will provide a huge reprieve to the people desirous of buying new vehicles. Ever since assuming the charge of office, the government has taken several pro-people decisions to benefit every strata of society, he said.
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the cast of the national emblem atop the new Parliament building, opposition parties and activists on Tuesday accused the government of distorting the national emblem by replacing the graceful and confident Ashokan lions with those displaying an aggressive posture.
The container, which was loaded from the Jebel Ali port in the UAE, was booked by an importer from Malerkotla in Punjab. The DGP said that as the link of the container has been established with Punjab, the consignment seems to be routed to some other place via Punjab.
