No fuel for DHQ hospital's generator

CHITRAL, Aug 4: The District Headquarter Hospital (DHQ) Chitral, which is the only major government healthcare centre catering to patients from across the valley, faces an acute shortage of electricity and remains without power for almost 20 hours daily. When the light comes for a few hours, its voltage is so low that it hardly can run a fan. During the previous provincial government of the ANP, a 200 KV generator was approved for the hospital to meet its emergency needs but strangely no arrangements were made to provide fuel to the generator. The hospital administration told this correspondent that they cannot bear the expenses to provide fuel to the machine. In the emergency ward, patients, including children and women, said they were facing many problems and the attendants were using hand fans to help heir children get some fresh air in the humid weather. The patients also complained that due to the low voltage of electricity, they are forced to do their x-rays and lab tests from private laboratories. This correspondent spent a whole day with the patients to know their problems and highlight it in the media to bring it into the notice of higher authorities. It was often noticed at daytime that the attendants took their patients outside under the shades of trees. When the hospital administration was contacted, they said they did not have fuel to run the generator. The attendant of a patient said a former tehsil nazim had installed a separate electricity line for the hospital but still it was not made functional. The people of Chitral demanded the federal and provincial governments should provide funds to run the generator worth million s of rupees which was rusting in the open.—GH Farooqui]]>