PONDA: The responsibility of staffing, maintaining and up keeping the Ponda Sub-district Hospital ultimately rests with the government, if it has any concern for the hundreds of patients who visit the hospital every day for treatment.

The hospital doesn’t even have sufficient number of fans for the patients to give them relief from the sweltering heat. 

The sewerage plant at the hospital has not been functioning. However, the officials say that the plant isn’t getting sufficient quantity of sewerage for it to function.

The hospital also does not have an orthopedic surgeon and even the general surgeons are in short supply. 

All these facts came to light during a visit to the hospital by Ponda MLA Ravi Naik.

When the MLA raised the issue of maintenance of the hospital, the GSIDC officials said it was responsibility of the PWD. However, the PWD engineers say they have no clear cut direction from the Superintendent Engineer on maintaining the hospital. 

Nevertheless, the PWD engineers informed Ravi that they would write to the chief the engineer seeking guidance on matter. 

The MLA was also informed that three unclaimed corpses have been preserved in the hospital for a long time; and when Ravi questioned Dr Pradeep Shinkre why no steps were taken to dispose them off, he said that he had obtained NOC from Margao Police to dispose off the unclaimed bodies, but did not know who should dispose them off -- whether the Ponda municipality or Margao municipality.  However, he said that he has written to Ponda municipality to dispose of the bodies.