Based on a reply received on his Right to Information (RTI) request from the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a Madurai-based RTI activist has alleged that the Union government was yet to allocate funds for construction of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Madurai.
K. Hakkim, the activist from People’s Awareness Trust, said that according to the reply, approvals from the Expenditure Finance Committee and the Cabinet for setting up AIIMS were yet to be obtained. To a question on the fund allocation and the construction company chosen for building AIIMS, the reply said: ‘details are not available as of now.’
“This means that the Union government is not keen to bring AIIMS to Madurai soon. The State government is also not pushing for it,” he alleged, adding that there was already a delay of few years in finalising Madurai as the location for setting up AIIMS in Tamil Nadu.
Responding to the allegations, J. Radhakrishnan, Principal Secretary of Health and Family Welfare Department of Tamil Nadu, said that the RTI questions and the response were taken out of context. He said that the work was steadily progressing and approvals from the EFC and the Cabinet were just stages in the process of fund approvals, which were yet to be done. “Obviously, the construction company and fund allocation details will not be available before approvals from EFC and Cabinet,” he said.
Assuring that the State government was doing everything in its control to facilitate setting up of AIIMS at the earliest, he said that the Union government had already commenced work on drafting the Detailed Project Report. “The site designs are also ready and they showed them to us,” he said, adding that the State government authorities will meet officials in the Union government in October to push the momentum further.
