City District Government Karachi (CDGK) is not the only stakeholder of Karachi but Sindh government, federal government and private sector are also running many projects in the city, Dr Nasir Javed Executive District Officer (EDO) Health said here on Saturday.
CDGK has 275 health units, including hospitals, maternity homes and dispensaries in 18 towns of city. CDGK has only one medical and dental college (KMDC). Even every town of the city does not have a hospital. The Sanction New Estimate (SNE) of 61 hospitals is not yet approved and if approved the funds are not being released. The government says it is facing shortage of funds and the City government should design its own SNEs and release funds.
CDGK's works department neither has funds to construct full-fledged hospitals nor much resources to generate funds. If a hospital, maternity home or even a dispensary of only 10 people staff starts, a burden of salaries would be on the department.
He said that ministers only visit the hospitals and order to run a hospital, dispensary or any other health unit but how these would facilities be run, its not their problem. We shift some staff or machines from one health unit to other to show it running; but what happened to that health unit from where the machine or staff had been taken away. It's again the headache of EDO. There are many hospital buildings that are being constructed but the health department has no funds to appoint staff there.