ROURKELA: Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of upgrading the Ispat General Hospital (IGH) here into a super-specialty facility remains unfulfilled, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) on Saturday came out with a clarification and claimed that work on the much-debated project is in progress.
It has been planned to set up six super specialty facilities in Neurology, Neuro-Surgery, Cardiology, Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and Nephrology departments while construction work on Burn and Plastic Super Specialty Surgery Unit has already started. An MoU has been signed with the Central PSU NBCC (India) Ltd for construction of the hospital and the PSU has floated a tender, it stated. Simultaneously, the RSP also put up a sign board at the super specialty hospital site on IGH campus.
In fact, a confusion was created after the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of RSP supplied misleading information to RTI activist Hemant Panda of Balangir. To Panda’s online queries to the SAIL Chairman over the status of project, the CPIO replied that no proposal for Super Speciality Hospital and Medical College (SSHMC) is available with the RSP. It also mentioned that no SSHMC or Nursing College is run by SAIL in Rourkela.
But the IGH runs a 40-seat nursing training institute for several decades. It is not clear what prompted the CPIO of RSP to commit the blunder, sources said.Criticising the delay, activist Muktikanta Biswal and Rourkela Yuva Jagriti Manch convenor Gopal Jena said misleading claims are being made on the project without visible progress. They announced to launch indefinite fast from Gandhi Jayanti. The Prime Minister had announced the project on April 1, 2015 while a few months ago, Muktikanta had walked to Delhi and Bhubaneswar to highlight the inordinate delay. In March 2018, the consultant HLL Infra Tech Services Ltd (HITES) had submitted two sets of detailed project reports (DPRs) for upgradation of IGH. The DPRs had covered constructions of SSHMC, academic and research block and 500-seat auditorium with an estimated cost of `213.56 crore. The super specialty block would have 156 beds in six disciplines. From the DPRs, it appears that the medical college would come later.
Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram said SAIL has provided `10 crore and another `200 crore has been sanctioned from Pradhan Mantri Swastha Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY). There is no dearth of funds and more would flow, he added.