HARIPUR: The delayed project of Women and Children Hospital Haripur is going to be ready for handover to the health department for making it functional for general public after a delay of four years, official sources told Dawn on Thursday.
The project of Reconstruction of 125 bedded Women and Children Hospital Haripur was approved in FY 2017-18 with the cost of Rs286.596 million and launched during the middle of 2018. The project was to be completed within three years by 2021, however, it was delayed on several pretexts, while its cost escalated forcing the govt to approve the revised budget of Rs567.570 million in 2023/24.
But, interestingly, the project remained incomplete till the second last week of December 2025 when the chief secretary KP, Shahab Ali Shah, paid a surprise visit to the site of the project and expressed his resentment over the delay in completion of a long-needed health facility.
The DC Haripur Waseem Ahmed briefed him about the reasons of delay that was mainly due to paucity of funds. The CS assured the DC and the C&W officials of early release of revised cost of the project which surprisingly rose to Rs1044.388 million.
Cost of project rises almost four times to over Rs1044 million
The CS, as per DC Haripur fulfilled his promise and got the revised budget approved and disbursed and transferred to the official accounts of C&W, the DC told Dawn.
“I am personally monitoring the progress on a weekly basis and would ensure that the target is achieved by the timeline of Feb 28 of the current year,” said Waseem Ahmed adding that CS was also in touch to oversee the progress.
The DC told Dawn that the JICA has also assured him that they were in process of purchase of medical equipment and would start installation soon after the completion of the civil work.
For the W&C hospital Haripur the JICA had already committed Rs3147 million for providing medical equipment/ machinery, medical furniture, installation, staff training and post installation repair work and maintenance of medical machinery that included.
When contacted the DHO Dr Mohsin Raza Turabi said that the preparation of SNE (statement of new expenses) for the human resource hiring for the new hospital has already been sent to provincial government for approval and once the building was handed over to health department the gynae and children departments would be shifted to W&CH making the space available for neurosurgery, nephrology and urology departments.
Currently, the 210 bedded District Headquarter Hospital houses34 paediatric beds and 10 nursery cabins while in the gynae wards there are 30 beds and 15 labour room beds. Apart from women and children specific daily OPD which constitute an estimated 30 to 35 per cent of the total 2000 plus daily OPD, the bedding arrangement for women and children at the DHQ hospital is hardly suffice to cater to the needs of the district’s population of 1,173,056 people.
The DC told Dawn that the provincial government has also approved the second revision of cost of Rs1640.853 million for the completion of upgradation of type D hospital Ghazi to Type C hospital which would now have the bedding strength of 120 beds. The previous approved cost for the project was Rs661.766 million.
Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2026