Delhi Lt Governor(LG)V K Saxena has taken grave exception to the fact that 24 hospital projects in the national capital, at various stages of delayed construction, had simply not taken into consideration the requirement of about 38,000 posts, that would be required to run these hospitals.
Giving details, Raj Niwas officials said on Thursday Saxena expressed displeasure while recently reviewing the progress of filling up of vacant posts in the Health Department.
Even as the Ministers of Health and PWD had started the construction of these hospitals, no attempt was made by them to even create these posts during the last 4-5 years, leave apart filling them, they said.
During the presentation made by the Health Department shocking facts with regards to absolute lack of planning and financial mismanagement in the public health infrastructure projects came up.
Civil construction of 24 hospital projects was started without any planning for the equipments, machinery or manpower for the same. The LG noted that this was a classic example of an ill-conceived and ill planned project, which amounted to criminal neglect. Neither was the manpower for these hospitals approved, nor was the requirement of beds, machines and equipments taken into consideration. No budgetary provisions were made for these Heads, the LG was informed.
What the people of Delhi are staring at, is construction of shells of concrete with no equipments, beds, operation theatres, doctors, nurses and staff in the name of hospitals, at a cost of Rs 8,000 crores.
The AAP government had undertaken the exercise of redevelopment of 13 existing hospitals as ‘Brown Field’ projects, construction of 04 new hospitals as ‘Green Field’ projects and re-engineering of 07 existing hospitals as ‘ICU Hospitals’, without factoring in the staff/HR requirement, machinery and equipment requirement and financial allocations required for the same.
Altogether these under construction hospitals, running behind schedule by as much as 06 to 07 years will require an additional 37,691 posts in various categories of Doctors, Paramedical and Technical staff. This staggering number of posts is yet to be created.
These 24 projects were tendered during 2019-2021, at a cost of Rs 3906.70 crores. All of these were supposed to have been completed in 06 months to 01 year time, since majorly prefab material was to be used.
However, not only have the projects been delayed, an additional Rs 3,800 crores will be required to complete them. This amounts to a cost overrun of almost 100 per cent.
In addition to this, additional allocation of about Rs 5,000 crores will need to be made for furniture, medical equipments, etc. once all the projects are completed.
Further, an operational cost of Rs 4,800 crores will be required per year for these projects. The LG was surprised to note that even these costs were not factored in, even as the government kept presenting one budget after another over successive years.
It seems that the above projects were deliberately tendered without any planning, with the only aim of awarding them to contractors by PWD. It seems that the projects were conceived for contractors rather than the people of Delhi.
The LG was further surprised to note that the entire budget allocated during financial year 2024-2025, for these projects is a meagre Rs 400 crores, while the allocated amount for settling arbitration cases in favour of contractors, itself stood at Rs 600 crores, in the Budget.
One is not only glaring at another scam of the Kejriwal government in the Health Sector, but the entire Public Health Infrastructure of Delhi has been put to ransom for the benefit of contractors, officials said.
