Sardar Tara Singh, in charge of the health portfolio in Mayor-in-Council, said health department officials were asked to submit the report after the BMC received numerous complaints about the failure of municipal hospitals to provide services in an emergency. ``Sophisticated machinery worth crores of rupees is lying in disuse in public hospitals, rendering ineffective the public health system in Mumbai,'' he rued.

Singh said he would visit Shatabdi Hospital at Kandivli on Tuesday to examine corporator Ashok Jadhav's charges about the equipment worth lakhs of rupees lying idle.

Corporators cutting across party lines had, in the health committee's meeting on Friday, complained of deteriorating civic health services and pointed to the bad condition of health posts, mainly in slum areas, and the unavailabilityof medicines in municipal hospitals.

``Doctors in civic hospitals have a nexus with chemists and private nursing homes. In one case, a patient at Sion Hospital was asked to go to a distant suburb to do a CATscan, because the hospital's machine was out of order,'' Singh said, adding that doctors were favouring certain clients.

He pointed out that hospitals also didn't properly display the list of medicines available with them, thus forcing patients to buy medicines from outside. Such hospitals will be hauled up, he warned.

He referred to the complaints received about the state of mortuaries in civic hospitals and said a hospital employee had last week been suspended for demanding a bribe to release a body from the mortuary. The BMC will take stern action in such cases, he added.

The health committee is also toying with the idea of private sponsorship in municipal hospitals, he informed, whereby private institutions and funding bodies could sponsor some service. ``The Sikh Samaj has donated 300 benchesto be kept below the patient's bed. Often visitors have no place to sit and end up sitting by the patient's side,'' he explained.