The construction work for the prefabricated Covid-19 hospital started on Wednesday at Midpu in Papum Pare district. The hospital, which will be 35-bedded, is coming up on a government plot near the present mental hospital. It’s a prefabricated hospital and therefore won’t take much time to come up. The report of the start of work has come as a major relief to the people of the state. Earlier, there were reports that people who had encroached on the land belonging to the mental hospital were creating hurdles in the construction of the Covid-19 hospital. It was feared that the project might never come up due to obstruction from the people living around the hospital.
However, the credit goes to the Papum Pare district administration which went ahead with the project despite trouble created by a few people with vested interests. The administration deserves to be appreciated for reclaiming the government land which was about to be lost to the encroachers. The team of the Papum Pare administration, led by DC Pige Ligu, Doimukh SDO S Tayang, the police team, and officials of the land management department should be praised for their prompt action of clearing the encroachers from the land, so that construction work for the Covid-19 hospital could be started. The local people, who had initially resisted the project, have also announced their support to it. They have demanded construction of a proper boundary wall to segregate the hospital, and a new road connecting the hospital. The authorities should listen to their grievances too and try to address them. For now two prefabricated cabins have arrived and hopefully the remaining five too will also arrive at the earliest, so that a full-strength hospital can start functioning soon. Each cabin will have five-bed capacity and altogether seven cabins will be installed.