MARGAO
Around half a decade after the three-storied building inside the old Hospicio complex was declared unsafe and vacated, the Health Department has finally dashed off a letter to the Public Works Department to initiate the process to raze down the building.
After The Goan highlighted how the three-storied building inside the old Hospicio complex is still standing tall when the PWD had declared the structure unsafe over five years ago, Health Director Dr Geeta Kakodkar sent a letter to the PWD to demolish it at the earliest.
Sources in the PWD informed that senior PWD officials have set in motion the process to prepare estimates for the demolition exercise.
“The exercise to raze down the three-storied building will cost the PWD a bomb. For, the job will require specialised agency and equipment to bring down the three-storied structure,” the official said.
Whether the PWD will take up the work departmentally by engaging a contractor or will execute the work as a depository for the Health services remains unanswered. “Since the request to raze down the unsafe building has come from the Heath department, the PWD will have to take up the work as a depository work for the health,” informed an official.
He, however, hastened to add that the first task before the PWD is to prepare the estimates for the demolition of the old and unsafe building before the government takes a call on the funding of the exercise.
The three-storied building had been playing host to old Hospicio casualty on the ground floor, wards on the first and second floor and a dialysis unit on the third floor. The casualty and the wards were shifted to other parts of the old Hospicio building around half a decade ago after a slab of the building verandah came crashing down. The portion of the building housing the dialysis unit was ravaged by fire, which later moved the government to vacate the entire building.
The unsafe three-storied building was highlighted by The Goan over a week ago after the Directorate of Health Services shifted the Margao urban health centre to the old Hospicio complex after the façade of the health centre came crashing down.
