When Dr S.C.Pandey had a massive heart attack, all that his wife needed to do was to pick up the telephone and call the doctor who was just 400 meters away from their home. But the telephone remained dead as usual, forcing Mrs Pandey to leave her husband alone and personally rush to get the doctor. The delay so caused proved too costly and Dr Pandey breathed his last before a life saving injection could be administered. In hundreds and thousands of homes around the country where the elderly live alone, the telephone is an essential lifeline.
Since these homes do not have mobile phones, they are fully dependent on landlines. The service provider, be it BSNL or MTNL or a private company — therefore has to be extremely sensitive to these factors, put the telephone numbers of such people on their priority list and ensure that their telephones always remain in working order. In case of some unavoidable problem, they must be provided with a mobile phone till the service is restored. This is the least that can be done to make life easier for elderly citizens. In fact in the UK, the regulator — OFTEL — mandates that even if services of such customers are temporarily withdrawn for non-payment of bills, they should still have access to emergency telephone numbers such as the ambulance, fire and the police. I would like the service providers, the department of telecommunication and the TRAI to ponder over this issue and take suitable action that would prevent at least other elderly people from suffering at the hands of an insensitive service provider.
What was most distressing in the case of Dr Pandey was that from the time his telephone was installed in 1993, till his death in 1996 , he waged a constant battle with the telephone department to get his telephone working. It would go out of order frequently and this worried Dr Pandey, a retired chief medical superintendent. During those three years, he had written at least 30 letters to different functionaries in the telephone department, bringing to their notice his heart ailment and the need for a working telephone for medical emergencies. Just before his demise, he had written another letter.
And his worst fears came true. His doctor told Mrs Pandey that if only she had called him on the telephone, Dr Pandey’s life could well have been saved. Upset by the turn of events, Mrs Pandey filed a complaint before the consumer court against the telephone department.
The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission’s order, awarding exemplary damages should come as a warning to all service providers. “Irrespective of the fact that whether the non-functioning of the telephone at that crucial time did or did not contribute to the death of Dr Pandey, it is abundantly clear that the non-working of the telephone over a period of three years had been a cause of constant mental worry, tension and stress to late Dr Pandey, a heart patient, and his family members. We are therefore convinced that this is a fit case where exemplary damages should be awarded...”, the Commission said, while directing the department to pay Rs 75,000.(FA NO 135 of 2001)
