HYDERABAD, Feb 6: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jameel has said that the district government is giving top priority to education and health sectors and a task force has been formed to make all closed institutions functional.

He was speaking at inaugural ceremony of district government hospital Kohisar, Latifabad, on Monday.

He said the task force had been assigned to identify closed schools and non-functional health units in the district so that they could be reactivated to ensure better facilities for the poor people.

He said that under the strategy about 183 closed schools and many health units have been made functional during the last two to three months.

He said that there were many buildings in these sectors which were not being utilized.

There were many schools where students were getting education by sitting on floors and many health units were without doctors and medicines, he said.

He said that in order to meet these challenges the district government had allocated maximum funds for these sectors in its budget recently presented in the council to provide at least basic facilities of furniture, drinking water, electricity and teaching staff at each school and medical staff, equipments and medicines at each hospital of the district.

In addition to this there were many new hospital buildings that have been completed but lying abandoned since five to 10 years due to non-availability of staff, equipments and medicines for want of SNE.

He said the government hospital Kohisar was one of these schemes which was lying abandoned and remained non-functional since 1998 when it was completed.

He said that one month ago he had given a target to the management of the district health department to make the hospital functional from its own resources till its SNE was approved and the management concerned had fulfilled the task in a proper manner.

He said that including this, the district government had six hospitals to run but due to non-availability of postgraduate doctors, specialists and surgeons, standard medical facilities were not being provided to poor people.

He said that in order to overcome the problem and upgrade government hospitals up to the standard of private hospitals, the district government had decided to get its all hospitals affiliated with the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences and the management of LUMHS had not only accepted the proposal, but also offered its services for providing training to the medical staff of district government hospitals for their capacity building.

While referring to the problem of shortage of funds, the nazim said that public-private partnership was essential to deliver standard health facilities to the people.

He said philanthropists in the district had expressed their willingness for providing donations to improve health facilities.

LUMHS vice-chancellor Prof Jan Mohammad Memon said that in addition to five hospitals of the district government, the management had decided to affiliate the district hospital Tando Mohammad Khan as well.

EDO health Dr Nazar Mohammad Junejo said that originally the scheme of hospital was prepared at an estimated cost of Rs43.102 million in 1991-92 but its work started in 1996 and completed in March 1998 at its revised cost of Rs64.937 million with provision of indoor treatment facilities for 100 beds, OPD, causality, surgical, gynaecology, ENT, orthopaedic, dental, nero and skin treatment facilities.

MPA Aslam Pervez and Latifabad Taluka Nazim Sabir Hussain also spoke on the occasion.