Lapses in registration of 8000 births and deaths: PGI Rohtak Senior Medical Officer repatriated to Haryana Health department

Rohtak: Considering the negligence that more than 4000 births and a similar number of deaths were unregistered at the Civil Registration System (CRS) portal, the Post-graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak, director Dr SS Lohchab discharged a senior medical officer from his duties as Deputy Medical Superintendent (DMS)-cum-Registrar (Birth and Death) and repatriated him to Haryana health department- his parent department on Thursday. 

Due to the high number of pending births and deaths, the PGIMS has given the charge of Registrar (Birth and Death) to Dr Jitender Jakhar and has asked to complete the backlog registration within a week. Therefore, the process is on and the pending births and deaths will soon be registered in the portal.

In addition, five more doctors from the HCMS cadre were repatriated to their parent department, i.e. Haryana Health Department, on Sunday after lapses were found from their side. 

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Dr Sujata Sethi, Senior Professor, Department of Psychiatry, PGIMS, has been given the charge of the Medical Superintendent (MS) of the PGIMS with immediate effect in place of Dr Ishwar Singh, reports The Tribune.

The decision to repatriate the registrar came into action after a committee formed by the Civil Surgeon-cum-District Registrar (Birth and Death), Rohtak, inspected and found the irregularities in that a large number of births and deaths were not registered at the portal, which is considered a violation of government orders since he was posted at PGIMS to perform his duty diligently.  

Apart from this, the director also requested the Additional Chief Secretary (Health) to issue a chargesheet against the SMO as a result of strict punishment for not following orders of the government health authorities. 

The inspection came into force after considerable fluctuation was noticed in the sex ratio at birth (SRB), which prompted to constitute the committee to inspect the record in the PGIMS. The director informed the Additional Chief Secretary about the outcome of the inspection in a letter. 

Meanwhile, the SMO had been on deputation at the PGIMS since 2015 and was assigned the duty of Registrar (Birth and Death) in February 2020. 

Talking to HT, the PGIMS director said, "An inspection was done by a committee formed by the Rohtak civil surgeon to investigate the irregularities/lapses in uploading the data on the CRS portal and the committee found that more than 4,000 births were unregistered and almost a similar number of deaths were unregistered. He has also intimated in a letter dated March 13 this year that the data of 200-300 birth and registrations per month was not uploaded on the portal, which is a violation of government orders. The enquiry committee found that efforts were not made to clear the backlog by engaging the portal staff sincerely and staff was not sensitised to the seriousness of the problem."

Meanwhile, the SMO informed The Tribune, "Acute shortage of staff in his office was the main reason for the lapse. I had written many times to the PGIMS authorities seeking adequate staff to upload the pending data, but no one paid any heed."

It came to light that the matter was also inspected in the past, but no solution was reached. Meanwhile, the director claimed that several communications were made to resolve the problem of pilling of records but to no avail. 

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