Four medical colleges to come up at Rs 1,500 crore in Punjab: Minister OP Soni

The Punjab government will set up four new government medical colleges at a cost of Rs 1,500 crore in the state, Medical Education and Research Minister O P Soni said here on Wednesday.

These colleges will come up at Mohali, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Malerkotla, he said after laying the foundation stone of the boundary wall of Dr B R Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences here.

He said there will be no dearth of doctors in Punjab as soon 500 doctors will pass out every year from the medical colleges.

Presently, there are about 1,400 MBBS seats in medical colleges of Punjab, which will go up by 500 with the opening of the colleges, he said.

Land has been made available for all colleges but Dr B R Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences in Mohali is expected to operationalise first since there is an existing 300-bed hospital which just needs to be augmented to attach it to the medical college, he said.

About 80 per cent of the faculty has been recruited for the medical college at Mohali and process is on for the hiring of paramedics and other supporting staff, he said.

The medical college building, the construction of which will start soon, will have an academic block, four lecture theatres, labs, hostels, faculty residences, library, auditorium and a community centre.

As per available estimates, about Rs 325 crore will be spent on infrastructure while Rs 50 crore would be spent on high-tech equipment at the Mohali medical college, he said. Meanwhile, consultants have been approved for Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala medical colleges and building designs are being reviewed, he said.

Once the building designs are finalised, tenders will be floated for these as well, he added. Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu, who accompanied Soni for the foundation-laying ceremony, thanked Bhelolpur and Jujharnagar village panchayats for leasing out over 10 acres to the medical college.