CHENNAI: The State government has sought forest clearance from the Centre to build a new medical college inside the Nilgiris forest. This will be one of the six colleges approved for Tamil Nadu by the Union Health Ministry earlier this month. Terming it as ‘very urgent’, S Swathi Rethnawathi, the Director of Medical and Rural Health Services has sought transfer of 25 acres of forest land to Health and Family Welfare Department, while authorising Joint Director of Health Services, Nilgiris to apply to the environment ministry for forest clearance.
A joint submission has also been made by Nilgiris district collector and Joint Director of Health Services justifying the need for forest land diversion. The MoU signed by both parties, a copy of which is available with Express, says a single piece of contiguous revenue land measuring 10.12 hectare (25 acres) within 10 km radius of district hospital, which is mandatory for establishment of new government medical college, was not available in Udhagamandalam taluk.
To compensate the forest loss, a 20.24 hectares (50 acres) of revenue land at O’valley village in Gudalur taluk will be transferred to forest department, officials said. However, State forest department, which does preliminary assessment of the proposal before recommending it to environment ministry, found a few factual errors in documentation. P Durairasu, PCCF (Head of Department), has written to Joint Director of Health Services, saying that the forest land identified was already leased out to Hindustan Photo Films Company.
Forest land was already leased out to HPF, NoC needed, says forest dept
P Durairasu, PCCF, on Thursday has written to Joint Director of Health Services, Nilgiris saying that the forest land identified was already leased out to Hindustan Photo Films Company Ltd and no-objection certificate from HPF was needed for re-diversion. There are also errors in shape files submitted for forest as well as compensatory land.
This apart, the forest department has requested for undertaking to pay the amount of Net Present Value of the forest land, which will be fixed by the Supreme Court guidelines, and also pay the annual lease rent as fixed by the department.
Need for medical college in Nilgiris
Nilgiris only has a 421 bedded hospital at Udhagamandalam, which caters to nearly 7.5 lakh residents and the vast floating population of tourists.
On an average, 750 to 800 people are treated as outpatients and 50 to 60 cases are being admitted for inpatient treatment, 150 to 160 deliveries are conducted per month out of which nearly 90 to 100 are caesarean deliveries.
Nilgiris being famous tourist destination with heavy vehicular traffic records 60 to 70 accident cases and are admitted to Ooty GH per month.
The health care in the district is hampered due to non availability of adequate specialists like cardiologists, physicians, gynaecologists, neurosurgeons, nephrologists etc.
Many cases are referred to higher centers in Coimbatore, Mysore or Kerala which takes nearly 3 to 4 hours travel time from Udhagamandalam.
Lot of precious time is wasted in travel which leads to more mortality. Many lives of pregnant mothers and infants are lost.
During monsoon, it is worse due to traffic disruptions as landslides and fallen trees are common.