Hospital Projects undergo unnecessary delays
Lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung recently asked the government agencies to show causes for the inordinately long delays in completing infrastructure projects. In response the public works department prepared a detailed report on two important hospital projects, one delayed by 15 years and the other by 10.
This report shows how projects get stuck at various steps with each of the agencies involved in granting clearances. Poor planning by the executing department is also a major reason behind these delays. The timeline for any of these projects clearly exposes the red-tapism that has crippled our system.
Out of the 2 hospitals, one was a 700-bed multi-specialty hospital in Dwarkaand the project planning was conceived in the late 1990s. The land was allotted for the project in 1997. The hospital, which the incumbent lieutenant governor recently revived, was initially supposed to have been completed by 2000.
The sad part is that between 1997 and 2005, all that the consultant was able to do was submit drawings to a few agencies from which permissions were required. A boundary wall was constructed along the plot. The project was revised from a 500-bed hospital to a 700-bed hospital in 2005 to reduce the burden on AIIMS, Safdurjung Hospital, MaulanaAjad Medical College and hospital etc.
DDA, to which plans were submitted in 2001, cleared them in 2008. They raised objections in 2010 that the environment clearance granted to the project was for the 500-bed hospital and not the bigger, new plan.The project has finally been tendered out and its formal date of completion is 2015. Sources in PWD say that it will take around four years for it to be fully functional.
Source- The Times of India
