RAWALPINDI: The renovations at Holy Family Hospital (HFH) in the garrison city for Rs3 billion have jumped another deadline, with the Communication and Works Department now hoping to wrap up the project by June this year.

The project to reconstruct the old and new block of Holy Family Hospital started on October 22 last year and the caretaker Punjab government had fixed the deadline for its completion by the end of January.

After it missed the Jan deadline, the department was given till February by then caretaker chief minister Mohsin Naqvi, who inaugurated the incomplete project.

The contractor missed the deadline again and the Punjab government led by the PML-N gave another unrealistic deadline of March 31 to finish the work. Punjab Health Minister Khawaja Salman Rafique had asked the Communication and Works Department to complete the work by March 31 and make operation theatres functional before Eidul Fitr. The Communication and Works Department still could not finish the work. Now, June’s end is the cut-off date for the department to hand over the hospital to its administration.

New deadline for the hospital is June now; hospital official says facility will be operational by July-end

However, sources said the hospital would likely become functional by the end of July since the pace of the work had been sluggish for the past two weeks.

“…we have completed 72 per cent of the work so far,” a senior official of the Communication and Works department told Dawn. He said that the work in the old block of the hospital had been completed while the construction work in the new block was going to end by next month.

“There is no shortage of funds; hitherto, we have received almost Rs2.548 billion and all of the money has been utilised,” he said.

According to the official, the work on the ground floor and first floor of the new block is completed up to 93 per cent whereas more than half of the work in the basement is needed to be completed. He claimed one more month was needed to wrap up the work.

He said that the provincial government wanted to complete the work as soon as possible as the patients were suffering due to the closure of the “largest hospital” in the garrison city for the last five months.

A senior doctor at the hospital told Dawn that due to the closure of the HFH, the patients had to visit the Benazir hospital and the district headquarters hospital, putting extra burden on these facilities.

The hospital has a total area of 672,000 square feet.

The number of beds in the hospital is 1,030 whereas the average number of patients reported in its OPD is 2,161 and 915 patients in the emergency department on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, District Coordination Committee Chairman Qamarul Islam Raja visited the hospital on the instructions of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz and issued instructions to the relevant officials to ensure the timely completion of the hospital.

He directed the Communication and Works Department to wrap up the construction work and hand it over to the hospital administration in July.

Qamarul Islam Raja visited Holy Family Hospital accompanied by Rawalpindi Medical University (RMU) Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Muhammad Umar.

He was given a briefing about the new proposed PC-1. The officials informed him about the extra funds to the tune of Rs700 million required for new facilities, like air conditioning and the heating system.

Qamarul Islam Raja asked them to prepare the revised PC-I regarding future needs so the government could decide about it soon.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2024