KARACHI, Aug 14: The provincial government has failed to start services from a 50-bed hospital in the nearly six years that have passed since the completion of its building, which cost more than Rs30 million of taxpayer money.
The Orangi Town project, which was initiated in 1993 and completed ten years later, was meant to provide affordable healthcare to the people of one of the city’s poorest areas but was then abandoned for unexplained reasons. After several years of negligence, it has been reduced to garbage dump that provides hideouts for criminal elements.
Spread over an acre chunk of land, the Sindh Government Hospital Mansoor Nagar in Sector 11½ of Orangi Town is today a rundown structure that appears at first glance to be an empty shell. The scale of deterioration is ample indication of the health authorities’ concern for the abandoned facility.
The hospital is located in a densely populated neighbourhood and the only other complete government hospital in the area is over an hour away. Yet a large number of the residents are unaware that the Mansoor Nagar facility was completed in early 2003 and believe that it is still being constructed, after which it will start delivering healthcare services.
“The project was launched in 1993 and the construction of the building started a year later,” said a senior official of the provincial health ministry. “It was completed in 2003 and the then minister also visited it in anticipation of the formal launch of its operations. After that, however, no progress was made and the hospital lies abandoned, with no equipment and no care towards its maintenance.”
He refused to elaborate on the reasons behind such criminal negligence which has denied the area’s residents their right to subsidised healthcare in their own locality.
Health authorities unconcerned
While the authorities remain tight-lipped over such wastage of funds, the various structures of the hospital are visibly dilapidated. Most of the wall tiles in different parts of the building are broken, while the infrastructure that had been provided for the laboratory is falling to pieces. The gas and water pipelines, which were laid down over six years ago, are rusting and patchy and will soon have to be replaced without their ever having being used at all.
Apart from the weakening infrastructure, the building that was supposed to help cure disease and illness is instead causing sickness in society, complain residents of the area.
“It isn’t a hospital, it’s a den for drug addicts and a shelter for criminals who gather there at night and cause fear amongst us,” said Salim Shahid, a social worker who has several times taken up the matter with the authorities concerned but remains clueless about the reasons behind the delays in launching the hospital’s services.
According to Mr Shahid, the area’s residents – most of whom belong to low-income groups – are compelled to go to expensive private clinics or to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and the Civil Hospital for complicated cases. “There is only one complete government hospital in Orangi Town, Qatar Hospital,” he told Dawn. “But that only caters to a few people from the adjoining areas since it takes nearly an hour to reach it from Mansoor Nagar and its adjacent localities.”
The health authorities, however, remain unmoved by the people’s plight and have no plans to launch the services of the Mansoor Nagar hospital in the near future. “A meeting is due shortly to review ongoing and complete healthcare projects in the province,” said the health ministry official. “That will obviously bring this particular subject under discussion and may lead to a decision.”
The frustrated citizens of the area, meanwhile, accuse the provincial government’s political administration of being too involved in “other issues” to deal with official affairs.
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.