For two decades, locals wait for new SDH building in Qaimoh

For two decades, locals wait for new SDH building in Qaimoh

Anantnag: A year short of two decades since it was sanctioned, the Sub-District Hospital in Qaimoh area of south Kashmir’s Kulgam district is yet to be handed over to the health department. Thousands of people are suffering for lack of healthcare and remain dependent on the old Public Health Centre, where the lack of facilities forces them to travel elsewhere.
The hospital building was sanctioned in the year 2003 and was to be completed at an estimated cost of around 19 crore rupees. The Roads and Buildings Department was entrusted to execute the work.
“The project ran into several roadblocks in the initial phase and it took five years for the work to start,” a source in the health department told Kashmir Reader. “It was in 2008 that the work was started but has remained sluggish. Even 14 years after, it remains incomplete.”
It was due to this sluggish progress on the project that it was included in the Prime Minister’s Development Fund. But that impetus has not been enough to infuse life in the project.
The new SDH was vital given that thousands of people, living in dozens of villages around Khodweni and Qaimoh, were looking at it for their healthcare needs.
“All we have been getting is excuses and deadlines, not the hospital,” the locals lamented.
They said that they have to go to other hospitals in Kulgam, Anantnag, and Bijbehara to access better healthcare. “But that is a grind for us given that none of these hospitals is less than 15 kilometres from where we live. Even for our basic healthcare needs we have to travel that far in hope of better treatment,” the locals said.
While the locals feel let down, the authorities in the health department sound equally dejected. “We have been consistently pressing for an early handover of the building to start as soon as we can, but they are taking their own time,” the source in the health department said.
Kashmir Reader talked to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Kulgam, Dr Rafiq Dhobi, who said that the hospital was going through the finishing touches. “I am told the tile work and other finishing work is being conducted in the building,” the CMO said.
Asked when the building will be handed to the health department, he said the R&B department will be better placed to answer that question. The R&B officials in Kulgam, however, could not be contacted.

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