Alappuzha: The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has decided to review the previous dispensation’s decision to guarantee the proposed Haripad Medical College’s Rs 300-crore loan from NABARD. The decision follows the Deccan Chronicle expose on March 4.
Health secretary K. Elangovan had on December 17 issued an order of assurance to Kerala Medical Infrastructure Development Company Ltd (INFRAMED) and Kerala Institute for Medical Education and Research (KIMED) formed to run the project in public-private-partnership (PPP). Finance minister Dr T.M. Thomas Isaac confirmed that the government was reviewing the order.
“Government will bear no financial liability relating to this project. If they get a bank loan, the company which runs the college has to repay it. Not a single penny would be spent (from the exchequer) on this," the finance minister told this newspaper.
Asked specifically about the order that the government will build the hospital with NABARD assistance, Dr Isaac said the LDF government was unwilling to say "go-forward" on the loan guarantee.
The order G.O (MS) No. 295/2015/H&FWD available with DC clearly says as Sub-Clause V that “the hospital complex in connection with the project would be built using the loan assistance of NABARD that would be repaid by the government.”
As per the order, the government will acquire the land and hand it over to INFRAMED in which the government has 26 percent stake.
Apart from the hospital built with NABARD assistance, a separate 100-bed pay ward and laboratory complex would be constructed separately by INFRAMED, and that would stay as a “standalone” profit centre. The order doesn’t say whether the government had any role in dealing with the revenue from the profit centre.
It also says, in addition to the company, a society formed by KIMED will get 10.1173 hectares of land on a 99-year lease. The society will run the college and collect the fees from the students as an independent authority and it will, after meeting daily expenses, transfer the collections to INFRAMED as the user fee.
It was on MAY 12 last year, the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy laid the foundation stone for the project near KSEB sub-station at Karuvatta amid protests from various quarters including Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishath, doctors of Alappuzha Government Medical College (GMC) and Bharatiya Janata Party.
Speaking at the function, Mr Chandy said the new medical college having 100 seats would be "a pillar in the vulnerable health care of the district."
Protesters had raised eyebrows at government’s generosity to a PPP project without resolving the issues plaguing the GMC hardly 15 km away.
The INFRAMED was formed with the health secretary as chairperson and special officer for the proposed medical college. Dr P.G.R. Pillai is its managing director.
