A district development council meeting scheduled for Saturday will review the ongoing steps to set up an ‘Ammathottil’, an electronic cradle to place abandoned children, at the Government General Hospital, Kozhikode.
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District Collector N. Tej Lohit Reddy has reportedly written to the Public Works department about the work to be taken up there. Kozhikode is the only district in the State without this facility.
The project had been included in the master plan for the development of the hospital and the estimated cost was ₹24 lakh. It was former Kozhikode North MLA A. Pradeep Kumar who got approval to release funds from his local development funds last year. The project got delayed apparently due to technical reasons.
Meanwhile, Kerala State Industrial Enterprises Limited (KSIE), which had been given the task of installing the facility, reportedly expressed its inability to execute the project on its own. The Department of Women and Child Development brought this to the attention of the District Collector. Sources in the department told The Hindu on Thursday that a major part of the work was to be taken up by the Public Works department and the KSIE’ s role was limited only to the installation and related tasks.
The facility is expected to come up at an isolated area on Red Cross Road on the south side of the hospital. An automatic entrance will be built there facing the road. The door will open on its own as soon a person reaches there with a child. It will lead to a hall where the cradle will be seen. As soon as the child is placed in it, the doors will close and an alarm will ring at the intensive care unit of the neonatology section. The child will be taken to the hospital through the corridor behind the hall. After legal procedures, the child will be handed over to the Child Welfare Committee.