PESHAWAR, July 17: Efforts are afoot to allot a plot, pledged by the former provincial government for the construction of a children hospital in public sector two years back, to a group of ‘influential’ doctors for the establishment of a private medical college.

“The government is in the process of allotting a plot in Hayatabad Township, which had been pledged by the former chief minister for establishing a children hospital, to a group of doctors,” credible sources in health secretariat told Dawn, saying that 15 million children in the NWFP would suffer if they were deprived of the proposed hospital.

The MMA-led government had pledged to acquire a 20-kanal plot from the Sarhad Development Authority (SDA) for the construction of the first-ever children hospital in the province. Upon the demand of the NWFP Paediatric Association, the former government approved a summary regarding construction of the 200-bed children hospital on a plot adjacent to the under-construction building of the Khyber Institute of Child Health.

A meeting, under the additional chief secretary on March 27 this year, agreed to revise the PC-1 of the project. Earlier, the health department had offered Rs8 million, but the SDA was demanding market price for the plot. The meeting decided to purchase the land from the SDA at the market price of Rs50 million, but nothing concrete took place and the bureaucracy continued dragging feet on it.

On June 3, a meeting held under NWFP Chief Secretary Sahibzada Riaz Noor took serious note of the delay in acquiring land from the SDA and directives were issued to the health department to transfer the plot in the name of the health department as soon as possible, but again no progress was made. Sources said that a group of highly influential doctors, who had already built a private hospital, were active to get the plot for the establishment of a medical college.

“In this connection, an alternative summary has been prepared and is likely to be approved by the chief minister. This would put at stake the future of 15 million children who don’t have any hospital,” the sources added.

Appreciating the project, the chief secretary had expressed concern over the delay in the project and also instructed that it should have been completed much earlier. He had also directed the concerned quarters to establish a 70-bed ward for blood-borne childhood ailments on immediate basis somewhere else that could be shifted to the children hospital after its construction.

On June 28, the government of Japan, which had already pledged $20 million grant-in-aid for the proposed hospital two years back, issued a survey report wherein it had given top priority to the children hospital in the Frontier.