LARKANA, Dec 29: The project for establishing facilities of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) scan at the Chandka Medical College Hospital, which was accorded approval by the government in 2006, has run into snags.

According to the planning and development wing of the CMCH, despite the Sindh government having given administrative approval to the project in September 2006 the departments concerned have not laid even a brick to start work since then.

Under the government’s plan, four MRI and CT scan units were to be set up at a cost of Rs564 million, one each in Civil Hospital, Karachi, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro, People’s Medical College Hospital, Nawabshah, and CMCH.

Former MS of CMCH Dr Zulfikar Siyal had written a letter to the provincial secretary of health in January 2010 and complained of delay in start of work on the project, said sources in the CMCH planning wing on Monday.

Surprisingly, before writing the letter the MS had invited Sindh Assembly speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro to lay foundation stone of the project on Oct 30, 2009, even though he knew full well there were no funds to start work.

In the second week of January 2010 after receiving the MS letter, the secretary formed a four-member committee with additional secretary as its head to look into the reasons behind delay in start of the project, said the sources.

In February 2010, the sources said, the committee was informed by the contractor the reason was ‘delay’ in release of funds.

Former senator of Jamait Ulema-i-Islam, Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro, who had taken up the issue in the senate, said the standing committee on health had discussed the issue in detail and they were assured that the facilities would be installed with equal share of funds to be borne by federal and provincial governments but even after six years, the government had not made any move to keep its word.

“I approached the health department, talked personally to the secretary and other officials concerned and asked them to kick off the project but in vain,” said Dr Afsar Bhutto, current MS of CMCH.

The contractor of the project had gone untraceable, disclosed an officer in the CMCH planning section in the presence of MS.

Following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Mr Bhutto also wrote a letter to the secretary of health on Dec 6, 2012, and reminded him of the undue delay in start of the project.

He said that he failed to understand the reasons for the delay and stressed that early completion of the project would ease burden on poverty-ridden poor patients of the area who were forced to pay higher fees at private labs to get the tests done.

PPP MNA Shahid Hussain Bhutto said that he had taken up the issue with the ministry of health several times and the ministry had always taken refuge behind the pretext that it could not start the facility without trained staff.

“It is gross inefficiency on part of the department concerned which has failed to put in operation a project approved in 2006,” he said.