MULTAN, Oct 3: Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi has said the newly-constructed cardiology institute has been equipped with modern machinery and qualified doctors and patients even from Lahore would shortly start visiting Multan for treatment due to extraordinary facilities made available in the institute.

The chief minister was addressing inaugurating ceremonies of Pervaiz Elahi Institute of Cardiology, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Complex in Nishtar Hospital and Multan Press Club here on Wednesday.

He said the establishment of the institute would not only benefit the people from southern Punjab, but also from NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh.

He said projects worth Rs1.25 billion had been completed in Nishtar Hospital alone during his regime while Nishtar Hospital was the only public institution of the country where MRI machine had been installed.

He said that a state-of-the-art district headquarters hospital would be constructed in Multan costing Rs700 million while Rs900 million was being spent at the children’s complex hospital in Multan.

The chief minister said hospitals were being upgraded at tehsil and district level to reduce big hospitals’ burden while salaries of doctors at basic health centres had been enhanced from Rs10,000 to Rs25,000.

Mr Elahi said doctors had been made available at 90 per cent of the BHUs besides providing huge cache of medicines. The chief minister said special allowance would be given to the doctors of Multan like other districts.

He also announced Rs50 million to provide free treatment to the needy patients at the cardiology institute. He announced 27 additional vacancies for senior registrars and 100 additional vacancies for house-job doctors in Nishtar Hospital.

Later, addressing the inauguration ceremony of the newly-constructed Multan Press Club building, Mr Elahi said the government was giving much importance to positive criticism by the media and taking steps to rectify the government policies where needed.

He said his family always had good relations with journalists and his father had founded an Urdu daily in 1960 that was later nationalised.

He said present regime had concentrated on facilitating journalists and allotment letter of Multan Journalists Colony’s plots would be issued very soon.

The chief minister said journalist colonies had been established in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Gujrat while such colonies would also be established in Faisalabad and Gujaranwala.

He said that only Rs11 billion was spent on development projects in the country during the regimes of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif while the present government alone had spent Rs117 billion.

He said that mega projects like construction of sewerage and water supply schemes, establishing Home Economics College, dental college, industrial estate and Rescue 1122 emergency ambulance service had been initiated in Multan while a Seraiki FM Channel was also being started in Multan shortly.

Later, the chief minister inaugurated a sewerage project worth Rs350 million in Qaddafi Chowk.