Bid to take Hospital Service Consultancy Corporation off cancer centre

KOCHI: A fresh bid is understood to be on to scuttle the award of the Kochi Cancer Centre project to the central government-owned Hospital Service Consultancy Corporation (HSCC) Ltd with a section alleging that the State Health Department is trying to give undue favours to HSCC, hiking the consultancy fee and project cost.    

Interestingly,  tenders have  not even been invited for the Rs 450-crore project. The present move to push out HSCC is similar to the one initiated earlier to exclude DMRC and Mr E. Sreedharan from the Kochi Metro Rail project.
Mr P. Rajeev, CPM Ernakulam district secretary, told DC on Sunday that right from the beginning of the discussions regarding the project, there were moves to torpedo the involvement of HSCC in the project.

“The Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer Movement and me proposed the name of HSCC Ltd for executing the project, as it is a central government agency. But the state government hastily moved to lay the foundation stone in August 2014 without awarding the project. The government could have nominated HSCC instead of going for a tender.  But some forces wanted to exclude HSCC from the project  and it is still lagging,” said Mr Rajeev.

During the meeting called at Ernakulam Town Hall some time ago to discuss the cancer centre project, Excise Minister K. Babu had also raised his voice against involving HSCC in preparing its Detailed Project Report (DPR).

“Due to the strong protest from the public, this was overcome and the HSCC prepared the DPR. They also said that they will finish the first phase in two years. They are implementing the Rs 2000- crore national cancer centre project at Jhajjar in Haryana and they have the expertise also,” said Mr Rajeev.

“The government which went on a project inauguration spree prior to the announcement of elections could not even open the outpatient wing of the cancer centre. The Human Rights Commission which is hearing a case in this regard has interestingly asked the Health Department not to be swayed by the allurements offered by private hospitals in relation to the cancer centre project. So anybody can see things in black and white,” said Dr N.K. Sanil Kumar,  member of the Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer Movement.