CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu health department has decided to delay the opening of healthcare services for elderly at the National Institute of Ageing on King Institute of Preventive Medicine and Research campus in Chennai due to the poor condition of a three-year-old building meant to house the institute.
The public works department must certify the building as safe for use, health minister Ma Subramanian said on Saturday. After inspecting the building with a team of officials, Subramanian said, “The building does not look like it was built just three years ago. The plastering had come off most walls probably because the amount of cement used was inadequate,” he told reporters. “We have decided to ask PWD engineers to check if the stability of the building is good. Once they certify the building as safe for hospital use, the geriatric hospital will start functioning. We were planning to start services in 10 days, but we don’t mind delaying it even by a month. It is better to be safe than sorry,” he said.
The National Centre of Ageing was established by the Union government as a tertiary care centre. The construction of the buildings began in 2014-15, and was completed at a cost of 157 crore. In 2020, the state converted the building into an exclusive Covid-19 hospital. The hospital had added 600 more beds and treated more than 28,000 Covid-19 patients in the last two years, he said.
“At that time, we could not go into several wards and rooms for inspection. Now, we find it shocking,” he said. The state will initiate action against the builder if they have compromised on the quality and safety of construction. “When we were in the opposition, we asked the AIADMK government if they were monitoring the construction of this building. They told us they were regularly inspecting it,” he said.
