Kidney hospital yet to begin operation

Commissioner says facility to be ready in current financial year

RAWALPINDI: A victim of political ownership, the Rawalpindi Institute of Urology and Kidney Transplant (RIUKT) are on hold for almost a decade adding to the difficulties of poor patients who have to either spend huge sums of money in the private hospitals or wait for months before their operation dates arrive.

Consecutive governments have abandoned progress on RIUKT on the pretext of being a project of a rival party.

However, the Commissioner Rawalpindi, Saqib Zafar, told The Express Tribune that the government had decided to make hospital operational by March of 2020.

“Completion of the project is among the priorities of the federal and provincial government,” Commissioner Zafar said.

Punjab government has decided to complete the project in this financial year, he said adding that funds for this purpose would be released soon.

He rejected the notion of any pressure regarding hiring and said that the process would commence shortly.



The Rawalpindi division commissioner said the first target was to make emergency, outpatient department and dialysis units functional at RIUKT. The rest of the work would be done gradually, he said.

“No politics is being done on the project, while the government has no intentions to stop its funds,” Commissioner Zafar said regarding the project of PML-N government.

The ground-breaking of the project was performed by the former chief minister Punjab Mian Shehbaz Sharif in 2012. The project cost has skyrocketed to Rs4 billion which was initially worth Rs3.2 billion.

The Rawalpindi division lacks any institution of the kind. It has been reported that many patients facing kidney related diseases succumb to death due to the scarcity of resources to afford private hospitals

The funds for this 250 bed project were not released despite the fact that its foundation was laid in 2012. The deployment of the relevant machinery and other human resources has not been accomplished until date.

More than a dozen dates have already previously been announced to make hospital functional.

In this regard, the citizens said that the project had been mired in politics. They added the previous government was willing to complete the project but the incumbent government had turned a blind eye to it. They added thousands of poor kidney patients, who had to travel to other government hospitals for their treatment, would benefit if the project was completed.

The Express Tribune contacted the project contractors who said that though at a slow pace, the construction was still underway owing to a shortage of funds. They said the first two floors of the building were ready and could be made functional after installation of required machinery and equipment.

Subsequently, the sources in the health department told that a large scale purchasing of equipment was yet to be done. He added that no medical and paramedical staff was recruited for the institute which was, undoubtedly, mandatory to run the hospital. 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2019.