Alappuzha (Kerala), July 18 (IANS) Kerala Health Minister K. Muraleedharan on Saturday announced that Community Kitchens will be introduced in government hospitals to streamline the distribution of free meals to patients and their attendants, while ensuring transparency and eliminating political branding from the process.
The initiative will be piloted at Alappuzha Medical College.
“Distribution of food packets under the banners or flags of political parties or organisations would no longer be permitted within hospital premises. Instead, all voluntary food distribution would be channelled through a unified Community Kitchen system,” said Muraleedharan.
The announcement comes days after a strongly worded Facebook post by veteran former CPI(M) leader and former minister G. Sudhakaran, who had questioned the prevailing system of food distribution at Alappuzha Medical College.
Significantly, Sudhakaran had contested the recent Assembly election as an Independent with the backing of the Congress-led UDF after he fell out with the CPI(M).
Clarifying his earlier remarks, Sudhakaran said he had never opposed the distribution of free meals to patients and their attendants. Rather, he argued that Alappuzha Medical College alone had evolved a system where food was being cooked and distributed from a shed constructed within the hospital compound, a practice not followed in any other government medical college in Kerala.
In other hospitals, he noted, food is prepared outside the campus and brought in for distribution.
He also raised concerns over organisations collecting public donations for the programme and demanded that the accounts of such collections be placed before the Hospital Development Committee to ensure complete transparency.
Sudhakaran further said the government should consider restoring the free meal scheme that had existed in hospitals in the past instead of leaving the responsibility entirely to voluntary organisations.
The former minister maintained that hospitals should not become venues for competition among organisations through the display of banners and flags.
His intention, he said, was only to discharge his responsibility as a public representative, alleging that vested interests had distorted his remarks on social media to portray him as opposing charitable food distribution.
The Health Minister’s announcement is widely seen as reflecting the concerns raised by Sudhakaran.
Political observers believe the Community Kitchen model could fundamentally alter the long-standing practice of organisation-led food distribution, including the DYFI’s (youth wing of the CPI-M) ‘Pothichoru’ initiative, by replacing it with an institutionally managed, politically neutral system.
–IANS
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