RAHIM YAR KHAN: The work on Rs7 billion mega project of 448-bed state of the art Shaikh Zayed Medical College Hospital (SZMCH) “Surgical Tower” has been stopped due to negligence of the contractor, consultant, executing agency and the SZMCH administration, depriving people of south Punjab of a modern healthcare facility.

SZMCH surgical tower was approved in 2020 by then chief minister Usman Buzdar and former health minister Dr Yasmin Rashid with a view to provide the latest healthcare facilities to the people of south Punjab.

The surgical tower was envisaged as a modern facility comprising 448-bed surgical wards, outdoor patients suites, operating theatre suites, a trauma centre and radiology suites.

The project, envisaged on the pattern of Mayo Hospital Lahore surgical tower, was expected to complete in 2022.

A private source who had been involved in the project told Dawn that the contract for the civil works had been awarded to RMS Pvt ltd, while M/s Metroplan Asian was the consultant and the Infrastructure Development Authority Punjab (IDAP) was its executing agency. Punjab Health Department was the end user of this project.

In October 2021, the civil works of the SZMCH surgical tower was started by initiating piling work, that was stopped for some technical reasons in June 2022. However, in July 2022 RMS again started the civil works of the tower.

Earlier in December 2021, the government had released Rs270 million to RMS and in July 2022 another Rs730m were released to the contractor firm. Thus the contractor was given a total of Rs1 billion in Advance Mobilisation.

He says that the firm, despite receiving such a huge amount in advance, had completed only four per cent of the work, but IDAP continued with the contractor “illegally”.

Later, IDAP served 21 notices on the firm, from December 2021 to August 2023, seeking explanation for the slow progress on the project and engineer’s certificate on default of the contractor, under sub-clause 63.1 of the General Conditions of Contract, but RMS did not bother about it.

In July 2023, IDAP recommended the termination of the contract with RMS, that was terminated in September 2023.

However, RMS got a stay order from a civil court of Lahore against the contract termination.

Meanwhile, till then RMS had already received the Rs1 billion from the government, while it also got an additional amount of Rs200 million on the pretext of completed work, though only 6pc of the civil work had been done against the project’s progress plan.

Besides, the RMS had also not paid an amount of Rs20 million to local suppliers of crushed stone, sand, cement, machinery and labour, while the firm’s own employees were denied four-month salaries and were threatened by filing complaints with police for demanding their dues.

The source said that due to flawed excavation work, the CT Scan building of the tower developed cracks, which not only shows lack of expertise on part of contractor, but also the consultant.

He says that later the Punjab Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) black-listed the RMS Pvt Ltd for two years (from Feb 20, 2023, to Feb 19, 2025) on the chargers of forgery and fraud.

It is learnt that RMS, during the award for the construction of Commissioner House in Gujrat, submitted the documents of the security deposited with the bank, which turned out to be fake in IDAP verification.

When contacted, SZMCH Principal Prof Dr Saleem Leghari said he was busy in a meeting and will contact later for his version. However, he did not contact this correspondent.

SZMCH Medical Superintendent Dr Agha Touhid did not reply the repeated calls by this scribe, while the project’s Executive Engineer Zaighum Abbas said he could not comment without the principal’s permission.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2023