Amritsar: Noted lawyer and former AAP MLA H S Phoolka has sought intervention of the acting jathedar of Akal Takht to issue directions to every gurdwara in Punjab to begin a weekly medicine langar to provide basic health services at doorstep in every village.

Phoolka, who won from Dakha assembly constituency in January 2017 before resigning in October 2018, handed over a memorandum at the Akal Takht secretariat on Wednesday.

Later, talking to media, Phoolka said his organisation Gyan Sewa Trust had been successfully running a mobile dispensary in 20 villages in Dakha and covered four villages every day.

“Around 300 patients converge to gurdwaras to take medicines from the mobile dispensary, which visits every gurdwara once in a week,” he said.

Phoolka claimed that 75% villages of Punjab didn’t have government dispensaries and they was always a shortage of medicines or doctors in the rest.

“We have observed that a majority of patients had issues of high blood pressure, diabetes, vitamin D deficiency etc. But, due to abject poverty, they can’t even afford medical treatment,” he added.

He said he did not expect the Punjab government to provide primary medical care at the grassroots. He appealed to religious personalities to intervene and encourage communities to come forward to help provide medical facilities where governments had failed to do so. “I have urged the jathedar of Akal Takht to issue directions to every gurdwara to begin a weekly medicine langar and ask doctors to provide free medical services once in a week,” said he.

Quoting his trust’s experience, he said the monthly expenses on medicine langar comes to around Rs 20,000 . “People from almost every village have gone abroad and they wouldn’t mind extending a help of $300 a month, which will also take the financial burden off gurdwaras,” he said.

