LARKANA, Oct 25: Work on the project of the Institute of Child Health Care, Larkana, which was planned to be started in 2005, has not yet take off reportedly due to bureaucratic wrangling.

The idea of the institute was floated in 1998 when the then Sindh chief minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi had announced the project in a symposium of the Chandka Medical College, said Professor Dr Khursheed Abbasi, the head of the paediatrics department of the CMC.

He told this correspondent that the PC-I for the project was prepared in September 2005. The PC-I was approved and the project was included in the annual development programme of 2005-2006. It would have been completed in three phases till the year 2008 at a cost of Rs123.641 million, sources associated with the project told Dawn.

The capital cost of the project was estimated at Rs72.424 million and its revenue component was Rs51.217 million with the proposed annual recurring expenditure of Rs58.634 million, the sources said.

The main object of establishing the institute was to provide specialised medical treatment to poor patients of upper Sindh and train undergraduate and postgraduate students of the CMC, said Dr Abbasi.

Sources at the hospital without naming anyone alleged that an officer of deputy secretary level in the planning and development department was unnecessarily creating hurdles by raising different objections over the project.

Inappropriate observations of that deputy secretary had delayed the project, the sources said.

The managers of the Chandka Medical College Hospital after removing the objections had sent the PC-I to the planning and development department but it remained inconclusive, they said.

After addressing all objections, recently the plan was sent to the department and then was shown included in the annual development programmes of 2008-2009 to 2010-2011, sources said. It would be completed in three phases.

The land adjacent to the existing CMC Children Hospital had been earmarked for the construction of the institute, Professor Abbasi said.

Sources said that in the current financial year Rs20 million had been allocated for the project.

At one stage almost everything was ready for PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari to lay the foundation stone of the institute on April 4, 2008 but the plan was postponed at the eleventh hour, Dr Abbasi said. The plaque prepared for it was still lying in the hospital, he added.

“Two times we had met MNA Faryal Talpur to request her to perform the foundation stone laying ceremony but it is yet to be done,” Dr Abbasi said.

When contacted, CMCH Medical Superintendent Dr Mehboob Shah said that the project had been delayed just for want of administrative approval. Soon a meeting would be held in Karachi for grant administrative approval to start with the project, he said.