M A I N   N E W S

Hospital that gets no patients
Location main impediment
Varinder Walia
Tribune News Service

Srihargobindpur (Gurdaspur), July 31
Empty liquor bottles can be found in the 25-bed rural hospital at Rampur Talwara (Srihargobindpur) and the Community Health Centre, Bham. This sums up the condition of the health institutes being run in the border district.

Though the hospital staff denies knowledge of the liquor bottles, it appears in the absence of work employees do not hesitate to consume liquor in the premises.

The township of Srihargobindpur, named after Sri Guru Hargobind, lacks in basic amenities. The Chief Minister is scheduled to visit the township tomorrow in connection with ‘sangat darshan’. The residents have a lot of grievances to present before Mr Parkash Singh Badal.

Even as the district administration has been busy since yesterday laying ‘pre-mix’, many areas have remained untouched. The Civil Surgeon or any other senior official of the Health Department have not bothered to visit the hospitals in the district since they know that Mr Badal will remain busy at ‘sangat darshan’. A casual visit to the rural hospital, Rampura Talwara, which was inaugurated on June 17, 1980, revealed its pathetic condition. Even as no patient was there during the visit of the TNS team, stray cattle was seen all around. No patient wants to get himself admitted to the hospital as even life-saving medicines are not available. The condition of the emergency ward as well as the general ward is pitiable.

The apparatus in the emergency room is non-functional. While most beds are broken, the bedsheets and mattresses stink. The roof of the building leaks at several places. Mr M.M. Cheema, Chairman, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (intellectual cell), and Mr Amardeep Singh Cheema, vice-president, Youth Congress, Punjab, who belong to this constituency, alleged the site of the hospital had been selected under political pressure. Hence most residents of the township remained deprived of its services.

Baba Devinder Singh Bhalla, a former president of the municipal council, alleged that the township had been ignored from the development point of view by the SAD-BJP government. He alleged the Badal government had not bothered to open any professional college, an industrial training institute, a polytechnic or any industry. Even private investors had not come forward to install units due to lack of incentive by the state government.