PUNJAB POLL 2022: Upgrade of bus stand, CHC on Zirakpur residents' mind

Gaurav Kanthwal

Zirakpur, January 19

Upgrade of the local bus stand and the expansion in the Dhakoli Community Health Centre (CHC) are the foremost things on the mind of voters in this town that falls in the Dera Bassi Assembly constituency. More than four lakh people reside in Zirakpur and its periphery but the area is deprived of these basic facilities.

The bus stand near Paras Down Town, which is more or less defunct, betrays the expectations of residents who have to board buses and auto-rickshaws on the busy highway daily. There have been instances of elderly persons, women and children getting fatally injured while boarding vehicles of the public transport on potholed roads.

The Punjab Transport Department, the Zirakpur Municipal Council, the PWD and the Local Bodies Department have not done enough to address the issue.

Even more baffling is the state of affairs at the Dhakoli CHC. It has been more than a year since former Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu announced the upgrade of the 30-bed centre to a 100-bed sub-divisional hospital. A gynaecologist and a surgeon were to be added to the existing staff besides an upgrade of the laboratory at the CHC before March 2021. But the proposed expansion has remained a pipe dream.

People are forced to go to the Civil Hospital, Panchkula, and the GMCH-32, Chandigarh, and other private hospitals for treatment.

The CHC infrastructure had been exposed during Covid and the outbreak of diarrhoea and dengue in the past one year.

“It is high time voters asked questions to all candidates regarding the upgrade of the Dhakoli CHC. The candidates should give a time frame in which basic health facilities are made available to the residents,” said Gursevak Singh Ahluwalia of Jamuna Enclave.

Kuljit Singh Randhawa, AAP candidate from Dera Bassi, said, “Residents have every right to demand a better bus stand and quality healthcare.”