Monday 16 January 2012

Mr. Azad, Mr. CM, how much more time for Jammu's Super-speciality Hospital?

 The Super Specialty hospital, Jammu is being developed at the whopping amount of Rs 135 crore. It is expected to ease the overcrowding from the existing Govt. Medical College Hospital (GMCH) Jammu. Presently, the GMCH Jammu is catering to 1200 to 1400 Out Patient Department (OPD) patients on daily basis, besides emergency and admitted patients and it has always proved to be a failure in dealing with emergency cases or those requiring expertise and equipment. The hospital doesnt have any medicines except the very basic tablets or injections and its a normal sight to see patients being taken on strechers on the busy road to near by private Test Labs.

 The 200-bedded hospital, which has already missed deadlines thrice, would have the facilities matching All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi. The work on the upgradation of the GMC Jammu was started in 2006 but it couldn’t meet the deadlines for three consecutive times due to administrative red-tapism and slow pace of construction work.

In August 2011, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad said that Jammu and Kashmir is getting full support from his Ministry for early completion of super-specialty hospitals at Jammu and Srinagar. The Union Minister asked the state government to take up the construction of new maternity hospitals at Jammu and Srinagar at the earliest. These hospitals will be fully air conditioned equipped with modern facilities and will be hundred percent funded by the Government of India, he said.

Azad had fixed a deadline of 18 month from the date of commencement of construction work.  Later, the state government fixed December 2010 as the second deadline which the executing agencies failed to meet. The deadline was revised again and the government set June 30, 2011 to make the hospital functional.  Earlier, former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee led NDA government had announced the construction of a hospital on the pattern of All  India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Jammu and other States, but it was decided later to upgrade the existing GMCH Jammu.

Can Mr. Azad and Jammu & Kahmir Chief Minister answer that do they mean what they say and is the government machinery in the state willing to do any constructive work or atleast let it happen? Or like Akali Dal in Punjab, Congress NC coalition is waiting for the next polls to come, when they will again inaugurate one more phase of construction of these hospitals in Jammu and Srinagar!

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