Pay extra money for medicine at LU

LUCKNOW: Now, the students, and employees of Lucknow University will have to shell out some extra bucks to get medicines.
Reason: the university failed to make payment to the medical store from where medicines are purchased for its dispensary-cum-health centre situated near Chandra Shekhar Azad Girl's Hostel. In turn, the inflow of medicines has stopped.
"The university could not make payment to the medical store from where we purchase medicines.The initial amount allocated in the budget was consumed, and the need for more was felt. Additional money was given but that hasn't reached us yet,'' said Dr VK Mishra, the only one seen in the dispensary.
As per Mishra, medicines for diabetes, tuberculosis, heart, and kidney related problems, infections, allergies and others were not available in the dispensary. "The students and employees are deprived of the benefit since the past two months,'' added Mishra.
"It's sad that we have to rush to local medical stores when we have a dispensary of our own. This is a basic necessity which we are deprived of,'' said a student who was returning from the dispensary empty-handed.
To note, Rs 15 lakh was allocated for medicines and maintenance of the centre for academic session 2010-11. But the vice-chancellor on the increased demand doubled the sum in December. However, the same has not been approved by the finance officer yet.
"The bill first needs to be passed in the finance committee (FC) and then will be made available to the dispensary. We are hopeful that finance committee meeting will take place next week. The students will get benefit from the next academic session,'' said university's finance officer, Raj Vardhan.
The reason for the early consumption of funds, as revealed by reliable sources, is due to the utilisation by teachers (working and retired) who are not entitled to avail this benefit. "More than half the funds is utilised by teachers,'' said sources.
As a result, students and employees have to make rounds of the dispensary requesting for medicines.