400-bed facility opens at Rakab Ganj Sahib today

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 9

The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) today said its Covid care facility at the Rakab Ganj Gurdwara would open tomorrow and have 400 beds to mark the 400th birth anniversary of Guru Teg Bahadur.

The facility will be equipped with oxygen concentrators and also have its own ambulances. No money will be charged from patients for medicines, oxygen or food. “The donations made by the ‘sangat’ (Sikh community) are sufficient,” said DSGMC president Manjinder Singh Sirsa at a press conference.

The local district magistrate would be the nodal officer for the government while DSGMC general secretary Harmeet Singh Kalka would be coordinator of the facility, which initially planned to have 250 beds. For emergency and ICU care services, the facility will be attached to the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital.

The Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanjara community hall at the historic gurdwara has been converted into a makeshift hospital. Asked if the committee was planning to seek from the Delhi Police the oxygen concentrators seized from hoarders, Sirsa said there was no place in the shrine for goods recovered from black-marketeers.

Among several donors, the DSGMC boss thanked Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan for giving an aid of Rs 2 crore for setting up the facility. Bachchan’s mother Tejwant Kaur Suri, known as Teji Bachchan, was born into a Sikh family.

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