For a family to keep alive a loved one suffering from Covid-19 is a nightmare, but it’s equally traumatic to arrange mortuary van to carry his body.
Even to hire an ambulance to take a patient to hospital is a major challenge now. First ambulances are not available, and if you are lucky to get one, it comes at an exorbitant rent.
Harish (28), a resident of Khyala area in the city, who first bought an oxygen cylinder for `20,000 for his father, had to pay `9,000 per hour to an ambulance to take him to Meerut where he was able to arrange a hospital bed.
Harish is not alone who has become the victim of these “black marketeers”. There are several others in the national Capital who are paying high rates to them just to save the lives of their loved ones.
In West Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh area, an ambulance service demanded `50,000 from a kin of the Covid patients to take the body to the crematorium, just 3 kilometres away.
“Since the family members of uncle, who passed away due to Covid on Wednesday, are in quarantine, we tried to arrange the ambulance but they were charging so much following which we finally took the body in our car as we cannot afford to pay such huge amount,” said the kin of the deceased.
“After arranging oxygen bed, just to drive from Mukherjee Nagar to GTB hospital, the ambulance driver charged us `8,000,” said Vikrant (34), who had taken his mother to hospital in an ambulance on Wednesday.
Generally, the cost of ambulance use in Delhi is `500 for the first 5 kms. Then the charges were `50-60 kms beyond 5 kms.
“My 66 year-old mama, was admitted in a private hospital in Dwarka and when he died the hospital did not make arrangement for disposal of the body. We contacted authorities but received no response but in the end we hired a general ambulance at `20,000 to reach the crematorium to perform last rites,” said Ranbeer Sharma.
“As hospital authorities are also aware of ambulance and mortuary van high rates, that is why they are not arranging the services. We were given contact number of mortuary services by the hospital following which we contacted them and they had charged us Rs 7,000 to take the dead body to crematorium,” said Sandeep Kohli (46), whose 70 year-old relative died due to covid at Batra hospital near Mehrauli.
When The Pioneer spoke to an ambulance driver regarding the spikes in rates he said that there is no security for them and they can anytime we can catch coronvirus. “We too have families and this ambulance is our only source of income,” said Subhash, an ambulance driver.
When asked about the charges, he said it depends upon the customer and distance. “Generally, we are charging Rs 5,000 per hour for customers going outside Delhi and in the city we are charging Rs 10,000 per 4 kms,” said Subhash.
“The ambulance service owners have created their own rate list. For ambulances with oxygen and other facilities the charges for inter-state travelling are around Rs 20,000 per hour and for general ambulance they are charging Rs 5,000 per hour,” said Sanket Mishra, who recently used ambulance service to get his uncle admitted in Haryana’s Jhajjar from Delhi.
“I paid Rs 15,000 in advance while when we reached here in Jhajjar hospital we paid Rs 25,000 more to the ambulance driver. Life is important and that is the reason we paid this amount,” said Mishra.
“Whether it is an oxygen cylinder or ambulance, one has to pay double rates to avail the service to save their loved ones. After failing to get a bed for my 46 year-old sister, Sunita, in hospital, bought an oxygen cylinder in black at Rs 28,000 through a friend. It took three days to arrange the cylinder,” said Vijay Dhiman, a resident of Rohini.
