Chattogram Bureau :
A 500-bed private hospital and a 100-seat medical college are being built on Bangladesh Railway land in the CRB area of the port city despite public opposition, including from Chattogram. In the meantime, the construction work of the project is waiting to start after all the official processes, said the concerned sources.
Earlier, after the DPP was prepared and finalized, the project was approved by the Ministry of Railways in early 2019.
After the approval of the ministry, the project was also approved in the cabinet meeting on economic issues held on 13 February 2020. Railway Minister Nurul Islam Sujan told the media after the approval.
According to railway sources, the hospital and medical college will be built on 6 acres of land adjacent to the existing railway (chest disease) hospital in the CRB area. The project will be implemented under a public-private partnership (PPP) at a cost of Tk 46 crore, the Railway Minister said.
Talking to the concerned people, it is learned that even if it is set up on government land, the management and operation of this hospital and medical college will be in full private (individual or institutional) ownership. In other words, even if it is on government land, the public will have to take services from these health services and health education institutions at high prices (like private institutions). Low cost government services are not available here. In this context, this project of building a private institution on government land has been opposed by the concerned people including the eminent people of Chittagong from the very beginning. They have also termed this project as against the public interest.
However, despite the public opposition in Chittagong, the concerned authorities did not back down from the decision to implement the project. After the policy approval of the project at the Cabinet meeting on economic issues on 13 February 2020, On 14 February 2020, another report was published in a local daily under the headline ‘Private hospital in CRB will be built on 8 acres of land despite opposition’, sources said.
