MULTAN, March 29: The construction of District Headquarters Hospital, Multan could not be started even after four years of its announcement.

During his first visit after assuming the charge of chief minister of Punjab, Pervaiz Elahi had announced that the provincial government would establish a state-of-the-art DHQ hospital here.

On Nov 3, 2004, the chief minister had announced that a site for the proposed 300-bed hospital had been selected and its construction would start soon.

On Dec 3 same year, district nazim Mian Faisal Mukhtar had announced that land had been acquired at a cost of Rs53.5 million for the Rs500 million hospital at Hassan Sawali Chowk.

On Nov 30, 2006, Hafiz Iqbal Khakwani, adviser to the chief minister, had announced that construction work on a new hospital would start shortly.

Four years have elapsed since then, but the Punjab government could only acquire land for this project.

According to PPP MPA Dr Javed Ahmed Siddiqui, the Nishter Hospital had been established some 50 years ago and since then not even a single hospital was established in the city despite manifold increase in population.

He said a civil hospital had been working in Multan since 19th century. Its indoor department was converted into children hospital with only a few new beds in 2004.

He said at that time the Punjab government had announced that a new DHQ hospital would be established in place of civil hospital “but the tenure of this government is about to end and not even a single brick has been fixed.”

The PPP lawmaker said when he had raised the issue in assembly session, the then health minister, Dr Tahir Javed, had assured that the Punjab government would allocate funds for construction of the hospital building in fiscal year 2007-08 which shows the government’s sincerity regarding development of south Punjab.

PML-N MPA Babu Nafees Ahmed Ansari said: “Although the chief minister is claiming that his government is giving extraordinary funds for the uplift of south Punjab but there are no signs of development here.”

He said the chief minister should visit Hafiz Jamal Road, Sharifpura, outside Dehli Gate, Writers Colony and the eastern part of the city and he would come to know the reality of development in these areas.

When contacted, Punjab Health Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Iqbal was not available for comments while EDO Javed Hassan Ajmi told this correspondent that land for the hospital had been acquired and PC-1 of this project sent for approval.

The EDO said he did not know when the hospital would be functional.

He said the 268-bed hospital would be the second largest hospital of Multan that would be established at a cost of over Rs1 billion.