Speaker, Tirunelveli Collector review progress of ongoing development schemes of Radhapuram constituency

Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker M. Appavu and District Collector R. Sukumar inspected 7 major ongoing development works in the Radhapuram Assembly constituency on Wednesday.

Mr. Appavu and Dr. Sukumar inspected the construction of Valliyoor government hospital, apartments with 506 units being built by the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board, Valliyoor Bus-Stand, Valliyoor Market, drinking water project for Kalakkad municipality and 7 town panchayats, another drinking water project costing ₹609 crore for 831 villages in Radhapuram Assembly constituency and groyne construction at Kootapuli at the cost of ₹48.50 crore.

The Valliyoor Government Hospital, situated advantageously close to the four-lane national highway, is being built at the cost of ₹30 crore with four modern operation theatres, CT scan facilities and geriatric ward. The upcoming hospital will have all modern facilities to ensure better medical care to the patients.

The ground floor of the hospital will have all clinical diagnostic services, CT scan, digital X-ray, ultrasound scan, ECG, general medicine, paediatric, gynaecology, ophthalmology, orthopaedic surgery, psychiatry and dermatology departments and the kitchen for preparing food for the patients. Facility for post-mortem is also being created separately on this campus.

The first floor will house in-patient wards, post-operative care ward, dialysis etc. The intensive care units, four operation theaters, tuberculosis ward, de-addiction ward, HIV treatment ward and geriatric ward will be created in the second floor.

“While the geriatric ward is a common feature in a medical college hospital in the modern medicine, for the first time, a geriatric ward is being created in a government hospital for benefiting the senior citizens of Valliyoor and its surroundings. The officials concerned have been instructed to complete the work at the earliest. We expect the Valliyoor government hospital to be ready to receive patients from September this year,” Mr. Appavu hoped.

Apart from the hospital, a round the clock, Public Health Laboratory on an outlay of ₹1 crore, which will be vital cog in Department of Public Health’s disease surveillance programme, is also coming up on the premises. The upcoming clinical lab will be a boon to the patients from Valliyoor and other areas up to Radhapuram, Thisayanvilai, Nanguneri, Kalakkad and Pazhavoor since a range of microbiological, biochemistry and pathology investigations can be done here. Hence, the lab is expected to play vital role in prevention and control of epidemic-prone diseases in this region.

The lab will provide services such as stool culture, blood culture, operation theatre swab analysis, bacteriological analysis of drinking water, serology / ELISA for dengue, chikungunya, viral hepatitis (A and E), measles, leptospirosis, scrub typhus etc.

The Speaker, after inspecting the ongoing construction of the Valliyoor bus-stand on an outlay of ₹12.13 crore and the reconstruction of the market at the cost of ₹6.03 crore, reviewed the progress of the groyne construction at Koottapuli.

Mr. Appavu and the Collector gave much importance to the early completion of the two drinking water projects meant for Radhapuram Assembly constituency being implemented at the cost of ₹609 crore and the other one costing ₹423.13 crore for Kalakkad municipality and Nanguneri, Ervadi, Moolaikaraipatti and Thirukkurungudi town panchayats, all falling under Nanguneri Assembly constituency, and Valliyoor, Thisayanvilai and Panagudi town panchayats in Radhapuram Assembly segment.

“Both the projects should be expedited and commissioned at the earliest even though December-end is the deadline,” said Mr. Appavu.

Even as Mr. Appavu and Dr. Sukumar were inspecting the ongoing construction of the Valliyoor bus-stand, they had to encounter the Valliyoor town panchayat’s inefficiency as around 100 residents of Kottaiyadi in ward 18 of the urban civic body heaped their complaints in front of them. The residents complained that they were not getting drinking water in sufficient quantity even as other parts of Valliyoor were ensured decent supply. Moreover, the roads in this area were in pathetic shape, they said.

The Speaker and the Collector immediately asked the officials of Valliyoor town panchayat to address these complaints and submit the compliance report within a week.