Gurdaspur govt hospital to be upgraded, locals say of no use

Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Gurdaspur, February 21

The state government has issued a notification upgrading a 100-bed Civil Hospital here to a 200-bed medical facility, even as city residents claim the proposed expansion will serve no purpose because it is located 5 km from the city, too far for poor people for whom government hospitals are actually meant.

The hospital was shifted from the heart of the city to Babri on the Gurdaspur-Batala road in November 2016. Ever since then it has courted controversy because of its faulty location. Poor patients are unwilling to trudge that long a distance. Local legislator Barindermeet Singh Pahra said, “With the proposed expansion, decks have been cleared to establish a medical college too.” Experts, however, say a hospital should have at least 300 beds if a medical college has to come up. Stakeholders claim the hospital does not have a road wide enough to let two vehicles cross at the same time. This has left doctors and patients flummoxed as to how the Health Department allowed the medical facility become functional with such a narrow passage.

Much against norms, the hospital’s only approach road, a 500-m-long thoroughfare which branches off from the highway, is barely 12-ft wide, and at some places even less.

Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC) chairman Amardeep Singh Cheema said he had received several complaints.

“I held an inquiry and it was found that the road, sandwiched on both sides by chemist shops and pathological laboratories, was indeed narrow. To compound matters, officials told me a new road could not be constructed till the hospital authorities gave in writing. Since the hospital falls in the jurisdiction of the PHSC, there’s a plan to construct a 60-ft-wide road starting from the rear of the hospital to the national highway,” he said.

A doctor said on the condition of anonymity, “Projects which should be located outside the city such as the central jail, District Administrative Complex and the judicial complex are in the city, while the Civil Hospital is outside the city limits. It is a classic case of a square peg in a round hole.”

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.