Team Herald
PERNEM: After being promised a full-fledged hospital at Tuem in March 2017, the people of Pernem are still eagerly waiting for the 100-bedded hospital to be commissioned. Constructed at an expense of Rs 52 crore of public funds, the hospital building currently only offers dialysis, and no other facilities.
The hospital project undertaken by the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation involved the renovation and upgradation of the Community Health Centre in Tuem to turn it into a fully equipped sub district hospital. In September 2021, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant inaugurated the dialysis facility on the ground floor of this building, but the rest of the structure has remained vacant and unused since then.
Nilesh Kandolkar, Deputy Sarpanch of Tuem village said that the CM had promised that the hospital will be commissioned by the end of the year 2022. “We have now entered 2023, but there’s still no signs of the inauguration,” he lamented.
Sources said that once the project is made fully operational, it will be attached to the Goa Medical College and Hospital as a rural medical centre, where doctors from GMC will work through their internships. The doctors will also be provided with residential quarters, while the existing renovated building of the PHC will be used for administrative purposes.
Expected to cater to the entire population of Pernem taluka as well as people from the border villages of Maharashtra, patients would have been spared the inconvenience of travelling to the North Goa District Hospital or to GMC, if the hospital at Tuem was made operational during the promised time-frame.
Even as the existing CHC was bereft of proper healthcare facilities, the people of Pernem pointed out that they would not have had to suffer during the Covid-19 pandemic, had the government commenced and completed the hospital project in time.
“In September 2021, CM Pramod Sawant had inaugurated the building but only the dialysis facility was opened. Such a huge building has been constructed but there is no service. As an elected representative, on behalf of the people of Pernem, I request the government to make the hospital operational as soon as possible,” added Kandolkar.
