PESHAWAR, Oct 21: The NWFP government is facing difficulties in completion of the under-construction hospitals because of irrational planning and political wrangling, officials say.

According to them, though the provincial government has increased developmental budget of health sector by 300 per cent during the last couple of years, the people are yet to get any benefit from the public sector healthcare facilities because of poor policies.

“The development budget for health sector had been raised from Rs1 billion to Rs4 billion annually but the benefits are yet to trickle down to the people,” said the officials. They said that during the past several year 10 hospitals in the province had been upgraded to category B and a similar number of hospitals were upgraded to category C but some of those were still under-construction and some lacked facilities.

These measures had been initiated with a view to improve the healthcare facilities but political wrangling hampered the plan and now the government was finding it hard to complete the construction of the ongoing schemes, they added.

Construction of district headquarters hospitals (DHQs) in Haripur, Lakki Marwat, Swabi, Nowshera and Mardan created big problems for the health department because the finance department was reluctant to allow their construction as these districts already had such type of facilities. “As a rule, new DHQ hospitals cannot be built in an area where these already exist but political influence was used to get them sanctioned,” sources added.

The former caretaker government inaugurated new buildings in Swabi and Haripur but couldn’t shifted hospitals there, due to resistance by people. The caretaker government spent Rs15 million on the establishment of intensive care unit in Haripur DHQ hospital, they said.

“We need Rs20 billion to complete the construction of 27 health facilities. The government had to complete seven type A and 10 each type B and C hospitals,” sources said, adding that these facilities weren’t feasible.

According to them, now some of those DHQ hospitals had been completed but the people of the concerned districts didn’t allow shifting of the old hospitals to the newly-constructed buildings.

The people of these districts have already protested the government’s move to shift the old hospital to new buildings arguing that they got scores of pharmacy shops, hotels, shops and other infrastructure near the old health facilities.

Sources said that now the health department was required to allocate 70 per cent of its resources to the development and only 30 per cent to improvement of services. The newly-constructed hospitals or those already upgraded had no facilities, such as ambulances, medicines, equipment and sanctioned posts of doctors, nurses and paramedics.

According to prescribed criteria the type A hospital should have 350 beds, 18 specialties, while type B hospital should have 250 beds and 15 specialties and C type should have 150 beds and 10 specialties.

Sources said that the health department was now considering a plan to place moratorium on the construction of new hospitals and focusing on the completion of the ones currently being built. In this connection, a meeting of the members of the provincial assembly had recently been convened by the health minister to seek their suggestion regarding the proposed moratorium on new hospitals.

“However, only eight of the 124 MPAs attended the meeting which showed their interest in improvement of health facilities,” sources said. According to them, the health department wants an assembly resolution aiming to ban construction of new health facilities for five years and completion of current schemes.