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| November 9, 2005 | Wednesday | Shawwal 6, 1426 |
Fund shortage hits hospital project
HARIPUR, Nov 8: Shortage of funds has put the project of the District Headquarters Hospital in doldrums, sources at the Work and Services Department told Dawn on Tuesday.
The four construction firms involved in the project have suspended work and announced that they will resume construction only when their dues amounting Rs20 million are cleared. “We are not going to restart work unless our outstanding bills are cleared,” said a contractor requesting anonymity.
The Rs230 million project of a 210-bed B class DHQ hospital was approved in Dec 1993 and the construction work was initiated in Jan 1995, which was to be by the year 1998. But owing to the change of governments and interests the first phase comprising OPD, casualty, pathology, X-ray, ICU, 40-bed wards and medicine departments was completed in 2003 with a cost of Rs60 millions.
While the second phase comprising construction of administration block, four operation theatres, medical, surgical, gynae, ENT, eye wards, labour room, nurses’ hostel, doctors’ hostel and medical superintendent’s bungalow was scheduled to be completed by June 2005.
Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani inaugurated the health facility on April 29, 2003 when the first phase of the hospital was completed.
The district government and health department, on that occasion, assured the chief minister of making the belated health facility operational with provisional changes in the original structural arrangements from May 2003.
He was assured that though the hiring of technical and non-technical staff had yet to be finalized and the shifting of the OPD, casualty, pathology, X-ray, 40 non-surgical beds and medicines from the old 72-bed hospital would be completed by June 30, 2003, the authorities would start the OPD of the new facility besides shifting of 10 non-surgical beds from the old facility from May 2003.
Few beds and medicine department were shifted, but the plan was rolled back and all the material was re-shifted within a couple of days on the grounds that the health facility was short of staff and running of an under equipped and under staffed unit was not feasible.
However, in the meantime the provincial health department approved the PC-1 of the second phase in June 2003 and a sum of Rs112.03 million was earmarked instead of making the facility operational.
Sources said that the finance department had released some funds for the remaining work but due to a delay in disbursement of funds the project was again delayed till June 2005 however the provincial government again revised the estimated cost of the project to Rs199.885 million from Rs112.03 million in September this year, further delaying the launch of the facility for indefinite period.
Health EDO Dr Qasim Khan said that he was ready to make the new hospital operational within the available space of the building, if the required staff was posted.
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