Health Dept non-committal about Jagti hospital takeover

Sumit Hakhoo

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 6

The state government remains non-committal about taking over the operational control of 40-bed Jagti hospital constructed under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation package announced in 2008.

The Health Department continues to ignore pleas by people to make the hospital fully functional and provide crucial diagnostic equipment, ambulances at the Jagti Camp Township, 14 km from Jammu city, in Nagrota constituency.

The camp houses nearly 4,000 displaced Pandit families. Besides, thousands of non-migrant local residents live in the surrounding villages.

Sources said the issue was discussed during the review meeting of the Relief Organisation (M) attended by Relief Commissioner (M) ML Raina, Deputy Commissioner (Relief) KK Sidha and BJP MLC Girdhari Lal Raina among others.

“The issue was discussed during the meeting but even officials don’t have the answer to when the hospital will be made fully functional. The Health Department is not taking any step since 2015 when the hospital was inaugurated. Neither has there been any progress in the allotment of residential quarters in Kashmir to employees nor have there been any efforts to construct new housing units,” said a senior official who attended the meeting.

MLC Girdhari Lal Raina said he had recently taken up the issue with Health Minister Bali Bhagat. “He had assured me that the hospital would be made fully functional in the next few months. The government is committed to providing the necessary equipment and staff as it will cater to a large population of Nagrota constituency,” said Raina.

Meanwhile, various issues were discussed during the meeting. These included 3.50 lakh displaced Kashmiri Hindus who are registered with the relief organisation. Although only a few thousand families get cash and free ration but issues like Permanent Resident Certificate, issuance of Resident of Backward Area certificate and ration card bifurcation is looked after by the relief department.

As per details provided by officials in the meeting, there were 1,701 individual inclusion cases in ration cards while 2,532 Permanent Resident Certificates have been issued in favour of displaced people from the Valley.

Apart from this, there have been 128 cases where people had sought medical assistance and of these, 64 cases have been provided cash assistance to deal with medical emergencies.

The total number of ration card bifurcation cases received during 2017-18 was 655, of which orders have been issued in 576 cases.