7 years on, Bandipora village residents demand NTPHC’s completion

Bandipora, Nov 23: The construction of a New-Type Primary Health Centre (NTPHC) in Zurimanz village of north Kashmir’s Bandipora district has been stalled for years, leaving the locals in despair.

The villagers, mostly from a fishing community, said that the housing board had been executing the project after demolishing the old dilapidated building that operated as a sub-centre before 2016 to construct an NTPHC in its place.

Ghulam Muhammad Bhat, a fisherman, said that their long-pending demand for a better nearby healthcare facility seemed to be getting fulfilled when the work started, but to their disappointment, the project never materialised.

Bhat said, according to the contractor, there had been issues with the funding, but the construction was going on intermittently for some time before it abruptly stopped a few years ago after the hollow concrete structure took shape.
“Ever since, we have been requesting the authorities to complete the hospital construction and make it functional,” he said.
A group of villagers said they had to struggle to access the nearest health facility as the roads were in bad shape and mostly inaccessible when the road remained inundated by the Wular Lake waters.

They said a decrepit one-room functioned as the NTPHC, but it was not worth calling a sub-centre, as there were hardly any doctors present there besides no equipment to check basic vitals.

“At times, we have to travel to nearby villages to avail treatment,” they said.
The health officials from the district said that while the concrete structure had been built, all internal works were pending.

They said that there had been a funding issue for the project that resulted in the delay.
Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Bandipora, Dr Rafi Ahmad Salati said that he would look into the matter and verify how much expenditure had been incurred on the construction of the building so far.

He said funds, if any, sanctioned or not would also be checked.
“If there are any provisions to start constriction that option too will be looked into,” Dr Salati said.