ISLAMABAD: After four years of no progress, construction on Pakistan’s first nursing university will begin soon, the Ministry of National Health Services has said.

The ministry’s spokesperson Sajid Shah toldDawnthat a memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed between the government of Bahrain and the National Logistics Cell (NLC), owing to which construction will start soon. He said it was decided to expedite the process despite the spread of the coronavirus.

The nursing university, which will be built with funding from the Kingdom of Bahrain, will cater to 2,000 students with 500 annual admissions. It will also have residential facilities for 1,000 women students on campus.

Mr Shah said that NHS ministry has obtained possession of the land on which the university will be built after paying dues to the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and has approved a PC-I to build a fence around the land and obtain utility services.

Bahrain’s King Hamad had announced in 2014 that he would fund the nursing university as a gift for Pakistan. It was decided that the government of Pakistan would arrange land and utility services for the facility, while the government of Bahrain would fund its construction.

The King Hamad University of Nursing and Associated Medical Sciences will be built on 237 kanals of land on Park Road in Chak Shahzad.

In July 2016, a delegation from Bahrian visited Islamabad to finalise the project, but it did not begin because of the unavailability of land. In January 2017, then prime minister Nawaz Sharif laid the foundation stone at the university’s proposed site accompanied by dignitaries from Bahrain, but possession of the land was not obtained because 700 people filed applications with the CDA stating that they owned the land in question, which was located in the constituency of the then minister for capital administration and development division (CADD) Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry.

With the project continuously delayed, then prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in September 2017 held a meeting and directed the CADD ministry to address the land issue, but the NHS ministry still could not be given possession of the land.

After the PTI came into power, then minister Aamer Mehmood Kiani announced that the university would instead be established in the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the land in Chak Shahzad would later be given to the NIH.

However, then chief justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar intervened and directed for the land in Chak Shahzad to be handed over to the NHS ministry. It was therefore decided that the university would be built in Chak Shahzad.

Last year, at a meeting held on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on NHS Dr Zafar Mirza spoke to the health minister of Bahrain, and she assured him that she would play a role in starting the project.

Mr Shah from the NHS ministry said that since the government of Bahrian has to construct the building and the NHS ministry only has to provide the land and utilities, the government of Bahrian has signed an MoU with the NLC for the university’s construction.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2020