Private ambulances are charging huge fares from members of bereaved families to transport bodies from hospitals as the number of official vehicles available, especially at three allied hospitals are insufficient to meet the demand.
A large number of private ambulances can be witnessed lined-up in front of emergency wards of Holy Family Hospital, Benazir Bhutto Hospital and District Headquarters Rawalpindi.
A private ambulance owner, requesting anonymity said they get a list of critical patients every morning from nurses to assess scope of their day to day business.
He said that ambulance drivers hover around the wards and as soon as a patient dies approach the relatives to offer their services. As a business trick, he said many drivers pretend to be shocked and grieved over the death and even join in wailing with the members of the bereaved family.
Sardar Hussain, another driver of a private ambulance stationed at the Holy Family Hospital said, “Normally we charge Rs700 to Rs1,000 to carry bodies in non-air-conditioned ambulances within the city. In most cases payment is requested in advance because after reaching the destination it quite often becomes impossible to ask for the fare.”
The biggest sufferers are people from outside the city who have to pay around Rs 4,000 to 5,000 to transport the bodies. It was learnt that lower staff of the hospitals have also started running their own ambulance service. Ambulance services of non-governmental organisations and volunteer bodies are not available immediately or during odd hours.
The Edhi Ambulance service, which charges reasonable prices is also short of vans and it takes time to seek their service. Every year, a lot of funds are allocated for the purchase of ambulances for the Health Department. However, official ambulances are seldom available or are only available to the influential. Dependants of the patients have appealed to the government to look into the situation to save them from the private ambulance mafia which allegedly enjoys patronage of the city hospital authorities.
