Recent inspection reveals many works pending
the goan I network
MARGAO
Both Parsekar and D’Souza repeatedly assured the people of Salcete that the district hospital will be commissioned by December 2016, even going to the extent of reassuring that the hospital may start full-fledged operations during the election code of conduct between January and February last.
Health Minister Vishwajit Rane’s visit to the under construction district hospital with local MLA and TCP Minister Vijai Sardesai in tow has exposed the previous government’s claim. The hospital will not be ready for commissioning even in December 2017. That’s not all. The previous regime did not even propose a full-fledged radiology section, including the MRI facility, in the new district hospital. And neither is the entire staff, around 276 to be precise, recruited till date by the Directorate of Health Services.
That the Health Minister suggested that he along with Sardesai will hold a review meeting every month for the next eight months indicates that a lot needs to be done to get the project going. Officials of the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation have been frank in admitting before the Health Minister that the civil works on the hospital, besides works on the four tenders, which will be floated any moment from now, will all be executed only in December next, leaving one to wonder how the previous BJP dispensation had handed out the promise to Saxttikars that the hospital will be ready for commissioning in December last.
Says Salcete’s lone minister and Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai: “There’s so much that remains to be completed. Our inspection of the hospital revealed that even the civil works, including flooring and plastering, remains incomplete. I do not know how the previous government had handed over the promise to commission the hospital last December.”
Sardesai was also critical of the Directorate of Health Services for not making the provision for a MRI facility in the new project. “I fail to understand the logic behind the decision not to have an MRI facility at the hospital. When the government has spent close to Rs 100 crore till date, spending additional Rs 5 crore on the MRI equipment will not escalate the cost. This facility ought to have been planned when the hospital was conceptualised and executed. After all, there cannot be any referrals of patients from South to the GMC, Bambolim just for an MRI,” the TCP Minister added.
