The locals and health staff at the district hospital in north Kashmir’s Bandipora have accused construction agencies of using sub-standard material as the building is beset with problems ranging from crumbling of wall plaster to faulty electricity and sewage facility.
The hospital building at Nusoo now functional for three months was completed after eleven years at a cost of over 32 crore rupees. The project was executed by the Jammu and Kashmir housing board.
From floor and plaster wearing off and electricity lines developing snag, the seepage in the washrooms and overflowing trenches is becoming a daily headache for the authorities, the insiders said. Moreover, the diversion walls of the building are also developing cracks according to the employees posted at this hospital. Ironically the authorities had claimed the hospital would be ‘one of its only kind in north Kashmir’.
Though equipped with modern OTs and other critical machinery, the employees accuse that the dialysis unit now functional for few weeks has also developed leakage.
Moreover, the non-availability of the lift facility at the hospital is also annoying patients who have to walk the stairs or push patients on trolleys and stretchers to the operation theatres located on top floor
District President health employees Joint Action committee said, “Director health Kashmir and deputy commissioner Bandipora should take the housing board to task and inspect the lacunas in the hospital construction so that they are rectified”.
When a new structure like this hospital is in this condition then naturally health care services are affected, he added.
“It is a feeling of frustration and restlessness when everywhere one sees window pans broken, marble worn off and leakage all over. One can only imagine what will be the condition of the hospital in few years,” he said.
Pertinently to mention, the authorities who over time excused delay in hospital construction due to lack of funding were also trapped in prolonged internal and finishing works of the hospital which according to the insiders had to be re-shaped to fit the modern machinery.
DDC vice-chairperson, Kousar Jan said, “the locals have waited 12 years for the hospital to get completed and function but on witnessing the adverse condition of the hospital a committee should be executed and anyone found guilty shall be taken to task”.
The locals as well as senior citizens and activists in Bandipora who Greater Kashmir talked to are anguished over the ‘half-hearted’ approach of the construction agency towards the hospital.
“It was a long pending demand and an unaccomplished dream to have a better hospital in Bandipora which took over a decade to get realised, but the ruin the building is witnessing is heartbreaking, the authorities must take the officials at the helm of affairs to the task as it was a grave matter of public health,” Wali Mohammad a local businessman said.
Medical superintendent Bandipora hospital, Doctor Bashir Ahmad Teli also confirmed to Greater Kashmir that there were faults due to the use of ‘sud-standard material’.
He, however, said that the building was yet to be handed over to the department as the JK housing board was still doing some works.
“We have through both official communique and verbally raised these issues and pointed them out to the housing board pertaining to the construction of the building and the work to rectify or renovate them is going on”.
He said that the work to make lifts functional for patients ease is also going on at the hospital.