PATNA: The AIIMS-Patna students called off their strike after seven days on Tuesday following their meeting with a five-member Union health ministry team led by its additional secretary
Arun Panda
on the institute campus. The central team gave the contractor June 2017 final deadline to complete the institute buildings. Panda assured the students that faculty recruitment would resume soon.
Talking to TOI, Panda said the students made their priorities very clear. He also said the MD of the firm constructing the buildings has been summoned to Delhi. Panda came down heavily on the firm for delaying the project. While work of estimated Rs90 crore is left, the firm has been completing work of only Rs3 to 4 crore per month since 2013. “The tenders of a couple of AIIMSs have already been cancelled due to inordinate delay. The contractor of AIIMS-Patna has been threatened to be blacklisted for the same reason,” the students quoted the official as saying.
According to the AIIMS-P sources, the contractor has been given three short-term deadlines before June 2017 to complete the works in phases. The firm has been asked to complete student-specific infrastructure like playgrounds, gymnasium, food plaza, a proper drainage system etc by December-end. Panda would visit AIIMS-Patna in January to review the work progress. By March 2017, the contractor has to complete a floor space for 300 beds at least, which requires construction of two blocks of
IPD
building having six floors each and the
OPD
building.
As of now, two of the six floors of OPD, three of the five floors of emergency care and all floors of the Aysuh building are complete. It is from the Ayush building that all the services, including less than 100-bed IPD and OPD, were being provided to the patients. However, none of the blocks (one block has six floors) of the IPD is complete.
The students submitted their written requests to Panda while mentioning their priority list of the departments for faculty recruitment in the following order: medicine, ophthalmology, pharmacology, anatomy, forensic and medicine toxicology, ENT, microbiology, pathology, orthopaedics, paediatrics and surgery. They also demanded 12 assistant professors and one professor for emergency and trauma care.
Panda said, “It is the
Institute Body of AIIMS-Patna
(which comprises experts from across India) which has put the recruitment process on hold. I would see why it happened and what can be done to speed up the process.”
Asked if the charges of irregularities in the process are true, he said, “The
IB is already conducting an inquiry. I can’t say anything offhand.” He agreed that availability of only 55 teachers against the sanctioned strength of 305, to be precise, was a cause of serious concern.