February 22, 2007	Thursday	Safar 4, 1428

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 21: Expansion of the AJK capital’s lone properly functioning healthcare centre with financial assistance from Germany may be delayed because an intelligence agency is not vacating a portion of the hospital premises despite repeated requests, Dawn learnt on Wednesday.

The 32 kanal piece of land housing two big buildings was part of a match factory which was converted into the Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) in 1992 by the then AJK government.

However, the hospital could not use the land because it is in possession of the intelligence agency.

Burden on the AIMS in terms of patients visiting the facility increased after the Combined Military Hospital in the central part of Muzaffarabad was destroyed by the October 2005 earthquake, necessitating its expansion.

Following the earthquake, the German government offered a grant of 23 million euros for a health infrastructure programme of the area, which includes construction of a 200-bed wing in the AIMS at a cost of 10 million euros.

But the German team was not able to start the preliminary work since the land where the wing was to be established was in possession of the intelligence agency, sources said.

“The German team has been asking the AJK health authorities to get the land vacated so that its experts could conduct a topographic survey and soil analysis,” they said.

The German team, according to the sources, had made it clear to the health authorities that a feasible and functional design of the hospital would be difficult unless the adjacent ground was made available for construction of the additional rooms.

“If the intelligence agency does not vacate the portion, constructed structures will be condensed, resulting in overcrowding of pathways,” they said.

The health authorities have proposed to the government to provide alternative accommodations to the intelligence agency so that the health project could soon be materialised.