Editor Mr.Mayank Rawat ( Chief Editor Mr. Rohit Mishra )
New Delhi: Eleven new hospitals, which were taken up for construction in 2020 and 2021 after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, saw little progress in the past six months. These hospitals, along with 13 existing healthcare facilities where new blocks were being built, require more than Rs 10,250 crore for completion and another Rs 8,000 crore annually for their operation.
Chief minister Rekha Gupta recently told TOI that govt would take up those hospitals where little work was remaining in the first phase, and the rest would be taken up in the second phase. CM also said her govt allocated Rs 2,000 crore in the 2025-26 budget for the completion of their completion.
According to the reply to an unstarred question in the assembly by health minister Pankaj Kumar Singh, the facilities will together add over 10,000 beds in the state-run hospitals. While four of them will be large general hospitals in Siraspur, Madipur, Jwalapuri and Hastsal with 3,237 general beds, the rest in Shalimar Bagh, Kirari, Sultanpuri, Sarita Vihar, Raghubir Nagar, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and Chacha Nehru Child Hospital will add 6,836 ICU beds.
Officials, however, said the hospitals stood in the same position as they were about a year ago. “There is zero physical construction in the Kirari hospital. In the remaining six with ICU beds, construction is between 40-63%,” said an official. “Unless we infuse a lot of money, the construction cannot be completed.”
The situation of the four general hospitals is only slightly better. While the one in Hastsal is 51% complete, the physical progress in the rest is between 77-81%. While the Jwalapuri and Siraspur hospitals were sanctioned in Aug 2020, immediately after the first wave of Covid-19, the one in Madipur was approved in Nov 2020, and Hastsal was taken up in June 2021. The sanction to build seven ICU hospitals was given in Sept 2021. All the hospitals were to be built on priority, but have missed deadlines due to the paucity of funds.
The finance department flagged a serious “resource crunch” in Sept 2024. A high-level meeting under LG VK Saxena the same month urged govt to take a decision on the construction. The budgetary allocation for capital works for the 2024-25 financial year was Rs 372 crore.
Mayank Rawat
