DEHRADUN: Over 50 ambulances have gone off the road in Uttarakhand as the private company which has been tasked with running the service claimed it had no money for fuel. The 108 ambulance service, which was launched in 2008, has a fleet of 139 vehicles run by private company GVK-EMRI.On Thursday, over 50 ambulances stopped running as they had not been refuelled. In Dehradun, only four out of seven of the emergency vehicles were in service.GVK-EMRI cited shortage of funds as the reason for the disruption in services . Manish Tinku, state head of GVK-EMRI, said that ambulance service had been disrupted as there was no money for fuel but added that there was no reason to panic. “We are expecting funds for the next month to reach us by Monday. The situation will return to normal after that,” he said.Giving details, Tinku said that Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) is deducted on the Rs 2 crore released by the state government every month. “A higher amount was deducted this month which left us with less money to run smooth operations,” he said.Meanwhile, the staff of the company also alleged that 700 of them have not been paid for past two months.Tinku denied that staff had not been paid for two months. “There has been a 10-day delay in payments, but we will clear the dues as soon as we receive money from the government,” he said.Meanwhile, the health department claimed that the company was shunning its responsibility because its contract was ending soon.“The government has awarded the new contract to another company named Community Action Through Motivational Programs (CAMP). Therefore, GVK-EMRI is not working properly. They did not even refuel the vehicles,” said a health department official on condition of anonymity.

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