Proposal for railway medical college still at nascent stage

Setting up of the 300-bed hospital to which the proposed college can be attached is the major challenge facing the Railways,according to Divisional Railway Manager Ashok Garud.

He said the proposal is at a nascent stage and nothing much has moved in this direction except that the Railway Board query about availability of land was replied to a couple of months ago. “The required 25 acre land is readily available and has been identified for the medical college to come up in the Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) model,” he said.

Garud said no further directions have been received from the Board after that,adding that the existing railway hospital at Sabarmati is grossly inadequate to meet the technical requirements specified by the Medical Council of India (MCI). A new,separate building complex will be constructed near the existing 50-bed railway hospital,which will not be part of the medical college,he added.

According to him,the first ever railway medical college among the proposed 18 such colleges will come up at Kolkata and the others will be set up in the light of the experience gained there.

A high-powered committee set up by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) is studying the proposals to be implemented. Partners will be identified at a later stage. Meanwhile,the railway employee unions have raised the demand for admission quota for their kin in the proposed colleges across the country,including Ahmedabad.

“We have discussed this in our internal meetings and M Raghavaiah,the chairman of the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen has written a letter to the Railway Minister regarding this,” said J G Mahurkar,general secretary of Western Railway Mazdoor Sangh.

He said the demand was also taken up through Western Railway General Manager R N Varma. “The colleges will come up on railway land and the railway will pump in money along with the other partners,” he said.

Garud said there was nothing wrong if railway employees get such quota,as all the colleges will come up on railway land and will be set up under the PPP model.