Locked Dhab Khatika healthcentre infuriates residents

Manmeet Singh Gill

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, October 29

With the Municipal Corporation (MC) locking the Urban Community Health Centre (UCHC) at Dhab Khatika two days ago, area residents, who were hoping for better health services, have been left fuming.

The Health Department had recently introduced the facility of 30 beds here to cater to the needs of the area residents. Earlier, the MC ran a municipal hospital here for over two decades, which had been in a shambles.

The upgrade of health services by the Health Department didn’t go down well with the representatives of the MC House as they saw it an attempt by the previous government in the state to hand over the historic building to the Health Department. The MC had started making efforts to get the building back, which culminated with the locking of the building.

With people already criticising the action, former health minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla said the government had spent crores of rupees to get the building in working order, but the MC has started raising objections. “The residents have the right to get better health services. The MC, which doesn’t even have money to buy medicines to conduct fogging, is ignoring the needs of the people,” she said, adding that the facility should be allowed to run.

An area resident, Kewal Ram, said, “The dispensaries run by the MC in the entire city are in a pitiable state. With no facility at the dispensaries, people have stopped going to them. A building, which was turned into a hospital in 1917, should be used for the same purpose.”

Meanwhile, health officials have shifted the staff posted at the Community Health Centre to other health institutions. Civil Surgeon Dr Hardeep Singh Ghai said, “We have got the file containing documents regarding correspondence between the Health Department and the MC about the building. We are studying the file and proceed accordingly.”

Ghai said the Health Department had started renovating the building around two and a half years ago.