PESHAWAR, May 6: Lack of interest by the NWFP health department and the district governments is delaying implementation of a plan of a US-based donor agency to construct 20 prefabricated rural health centres in the quake-hit areas.

The donor organisation, AmeriCares, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation has prepared the plan.

“The project will cost $3.4 million. Under it, 14 centres will be established in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, while six have been planned for the quake-hit districts of the NWFP,” said an official.

According to him, initially, eight centres had been planned in the NWFP and 12 in Azad Kashmir, but the provincial health department had agreed on building only six.

Officials said they had visited Kohistan, Abbottabad, Balakot, Mansehra and Shangla last month and selected six sites for the centres but now they were facing problems in starting work at three of the sites.

“We wanted to start construction of the prefabricated rural health centres in the NWFP and AJK simultaneously,” said an official.

Designed by the WHO, each centre would consist of 10 rooms, including an out-patient department, X-ray room, laboratory and operation theatre, the official said.

He said that after the construction of the centres, the donor organisation would provide stock of medicines for two months to each of them, but would make sure that the government ran them for the benefit of people by providing enough staff.

Representatives of AmeriCare and the WHO have informed health department officials about non-availability of the desired space at three locations but the response was not satisfactory, the sources said.

Officials said there was a new ambulance at the Shattiyal rural health centre in Kohistan district, but services of a driver were not available. In Mansehra, a centre was being run by the army and the prefabricated structure would be installed at some other place, they said.