ISLAMABAD: A Senate committee on Wednesday caught the federal government wrongly blaming the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for the inordinate delay in adding a new block to the city’s Polyclinic hospital and directed the government to make amends within 15 days.

Senator Kulsoom Parveen, chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, criticised the government for “not playing a pro-active role” in implementing a project of public health.

She made the remark after the CDA demolished the claim of the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) to the committee that the CDA was refusing to transfer land for the expansion of Polyclinic, the oldest hospital of Islamabad.

Initiated in 2010, the expansion plan called for annexing the 2.54-acre Argentine Park in front of Polyclinic to raise new blocks to turn the renamed Federal Government Services Hospital into a 1,100-bed medical complex.

“But the plan has not moved an inch because we could not have the land required for construction of hospital complex, available at Argentine Park, without the cooperation of CDA,” secretary CADD Faridullah Khan told the Senate committee.

CDA Chairman Maroof Afzal, however, turned the tables on CADD in his response. He informed the Senate committee that only the prime minister has the power to transfer the land on the terms the CADD wanted it.

“There are two impediments in transferring the land – firstly the Supreme Court has restricted the transfer of park land for any other purpose, and secondly CADD wants the Argentina Park land free of cost,” he informed the committee. Still the CDA forwarded the file containing the request for free-of-cost land to the Cabinet Secretariat where the matter has been resting.

After listening to the two officials, the committee members expressed displeasure that the delay in implementing the project was hurting the ordinary citizens of the region.

“Not only the local population has been facing shortage of health services in the area but patients from distance places in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Kashmir also turn to Islamabad for treatment,” observed Senator Kulsoom Parveen.

Even though the Argentinean government has offered financial and technical support, the project of new Polyclinic complex has remained confined to documents.

Argentine’s ambassador Rodolfo J. Martin Saravia has described the hoped-for new block as ‘Argentina Pavilion’.

The Senate committee’s chairperson wanted Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab to pursue the matter and he promised to report action to the committee after two weeks.

After permission is obtained for transferring Argentine Park land free of cost, the committee would look into the apex court’s ban on any other use of parks.

The committee also discussed complaints against private housing societies and asked the CDA to keep an eye on them to prevent their managements from deceiving or defrauding their members.