SHILLONG:
State Health and Family Welfare Minister, James Sangma, has asked why AL Hek was being defensive about the KPC Group with whom the government had signed an agreement to construct the Shillong Medical College (SMC).
“I find his defensive stand very strange,” the Health minister said.
Sangma also said that the BJP legislator should be asked if such a stand indicated or implied that the KPC Group was very close to him.
He said earlier said that there is no question of fooling.
“On the contrary, I would say that this project has been in cold storage for the last nine to 10 years and it has been a great loss both financially and also in terms of countless number of students who could have taken advantage of having a medical college in the state and it would have benefitted so many of our youth,” Sangma said.
The minister said that Hek did not hear what he had said on the floor of the House during the recently- concluded autumn session.
Sangma said that the KPC group had requested changes in the fee structure.
“Well if bah Hek endorses that view I think you have to pose that question to him on why he is agreeable to taxing our students to pay higher fees. For us as a government, that is not negotiable. For us as a government we want to ensure that students from our state, whatever fee structure we have had in the past, remain the same since most of them come from humble backgrounds,” he added.
Sangma said that the KPC group asked for many changes in the MoU which this government did not agree to.
He said that if the matter were to be kept lingering the project will not see the light of day.
“So we made a conscious decision and we said that whatever has been done has been done but now we are going to wipe the slate clean and we are going to start afresh with new terms and conditions with any other concessionaire that may be interested to take it,” he said.
When asked about the delay to start the construction of the Shillong Medical College while the Tura Medical College has completed 33 per cent of construction, the minister said that the latter is a government-run institution and therefore certain funds were made available by the government of India to construct and those funds were utilised.
Meanwhile, for Shillong Medical College which is in public-private-partnership mode until and unless the terms and conditions are agreed upon things cannot move and start.
“That’s where things have been stuck in limbo and there has been no progress in this regard. It’s very unfortunate let me say because if initiative had been taken in the past this could have been easily resolved and ten years would not have been wasted where we still don’t have a medical college,” Sangma said.
He also said that Meghalaya is the only state without a medical college in the North East.