Private ambulance owners' strike at DMCH suspended for seven days

The ongoing strike by private ambulance owners at Dhaka Medical College (DMCH) Hospital, demanding designated parking, has been suspended for seven days. Badal Madbar, general secretary of the Bangladesh Besorkari Ambulance Malik Kalyan Samabay Samiti, announced the decision on Wednesday (28 October) evening.

Because of the strike, patients and their relatives at DMCH Hospital faced severe suffering. Many were in difficulty as no ambulances were available to take bodies home or to transfer seriously ill patients to other hospitals.

Badal Madbar had earlier said that 120 to 130 of their ambulances are engaged in serving around four thousand patients at DMCH. But with no designated parking space, police file cases and send the vehicles to dumping when they are kept on the road.

He said they had renovated a place beside the hospital's old building at their own expense, but the ambulances were later removed from there as well. Although they are willing to pay revenue to the government, they want a designated parking arrangement.

DMCH Hospital's director, Brigadier General AKM Md Farhad Hossain, had said there is no provision for keeping private ambulances on government land. However, the ambulance owners are not being forbidden from doing business; they will have to stay outside the hospital. He also said the officer-in-charge of Shahbagh Police Station has been tasked with looking into the matter.