Bhopal Revisited: Neglect And Apathy Galore

Bhopal revisited 13 years after the worlds worst industrial disaster struck the city is a tale of official apathy and neglect.

Patients gasping for breath lying on broken beds in a hospital and vacant industrial worksheds belie claims of successful rehabilitation of the gas tragedy victims.

On the night of December 2-3, 1984, over 40 tonnes of Methyl Iso Cyanate and Hydrogen Cyanide leaked out of Union Carbide Corporation, killing an estimated 16,000 and leaving lakhs with chronic lung and eye problems.

Three prominent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have charged the government with tardy progress in rehabilitation of the victims and lopsided dispensation of compensation claims following the 1991 Supreme Court award of $470 million to them.

 

The NGOs Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti, Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan and Bhopal Group for Information and Action, have warned that the victims plight will worsen once the rehabilitation aids stop in October.

The NGOs filed a petition in the Supreme Court last month seeking recognition of health and rehabilitation of the victims as a fundamental right.

Bhagirath Prasad, secretary of Bhopal Gas Relief and Rehabilitation, claims the government has done reasonably well in providing medical treatment besides economic, social and environmental rehabilitation.

In this regard, the government steps include free treatment at gas relief hospitals built after the disaster, opening an industrial training institute and a production complex for affected families and allotment of free houses.

But, a visit by a team of the Indian Science Writers Association to the hospitals revealed a different story. At the Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital set up in 1986 for the gas-affected, beds were found broken and stocks of curtains, mattress and blankets sub-standard.

The Rs three crore 30-bed Pulmonary Medicine Centre set up to cater to victims who developed chronic lung problems does not yet have permanent staff or technicians and medicines are in short supply. The Centre is running on borrowed staff, said M Nanda, its former head who has applied for voluntary retirement. The Rs 6.5 crore 150-bed Indira Gandhi Women and Childrens Hospital was completed in 1995 but is yet to be formally opened.

It is an administrative paradox that doctors, nurses and technicians posts are not sanctioned but equipment worth crores of rupees have been bought, M K Joshi, chief medical officer of the hospital said.

The 650-bed Kamala Nehru Hospital, construction for which began in 1986 with an estimated cost of Rs eight crore, is still incomplete while its cost has escalated to Rs 1800 crore.

The NGOs are worried over the running of the Bhopal Hospital Trust, set up by Union Carbide, following the SCs orders.

The sole trustee of the trust is Ian Percival, a former attorney who worked working with Union Carbide from 1984-91.

The NGOs allege that Percival is using the trust funds for personal use and that little money has been spent on building the hospital.

Prasad, too, expressed dissatisfaction over the trusts functioning, and said an autonomous body or trust should replace it once the new hospital is constructed.

The state governments decision to transfer government dispensaries to the trust has only added to the doctors concern.

Joshi fears the trust-owned dispensaries will start excluding gas-affected patients slowly from treatment and present data showing fewer gas-affected victims over the years.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), too, has been criticised for terminating in 1994 all research projects related to effects of the gas leak.

M P Dwivedi, former director of ICMRs Bhopal Gas Disaster Research Centre, said, ICMR should never have closed all projects.