CHAKWAL: Despite being completed six months ago, the Kallar Kahar Trauma Centre has not yet been made functional.

The building for the centre is ready, and over half of the machinery needed has already been purchased, but doctors have shown little interest in applying to work at the centre even though job advertisements have been displayed in national newspapers twice already.

Officials in the district administration told Dawn that the trauma centre has been difficult for the administration to handle, since no one has applied for the post of medical superintendent and or for posts of specialists that are vital for operation of the trauma centre.

Even doctors from the Chakwal district are unwilling to work at the centre, because it is located in a small town in Kallar Kahar. In the meantime, hundreds of patients injured in road accidents are rushed to Rawalpindi as there are no neurosurgeons or orthopaedic surgeons working in Chakwal.

Since the construction of the Motorway, fatalities from traffic accidents have become a routine occurrence on the patch of the road that passes through the Salt Range.

Road accidents in other parts of the district, many of them involving motorcycles, have pushed the authorities to propose a trauma centre in Chakwal. The need for a trauma centre was particularly felt on Sept 26, 2011, when a bus carrying students from a private school in Faisalabad had an accident on the Motorway. The crash left 30 students and seven others dead. At the time, there were no neurosur-geons or orthopaedic surgeons at any of Chakwal`s public hospitals.

The provincial minister for housing and urban development and public health engineering, Malik Tanvir Aslam Awan, who belongs to Chakwal district, managed to get a trauma centre for Chakwal approved. The scheme was approved by the provincial chiefminister,andwastitled`Establishment of state-of-the-art trauma centre Kallar Kahar` on May 21, 2012.

The centre was to be completed in June 2014, at a cost of Rs75.6 million. The scheme was then revised, and costs increased to Rs260.7 million, and work was completed a year later, in August 2015.

However, the centre which includes a main building and doctors` residences is still not functional.

According to documents available with Dawn, 102 employees including doctors, specialists and paramedical staff mustbe recruited to run the centre. Not one employee has been recruited thus far.

`To make the trauma centre functional, we first need a medical superintendent and some specialists including neurosurgeons and orthopaedic surgeons but despite giving advertisements in national newspapers twice, no doctor has applied so far,` Executive District Officer Health Dr Sultan Mohammad Alamgir said.

He said the centre would not just treat brain and bone injuries, but would also act as a full-fledged hospital.

He said that his department is working to make the centre functional, and appealed to doctors in Chakwal district to offer their services atthe centre.

Sources told Dawn that doctors are unwilling to work at the centre due to its location. `A doctor serving in a big city, even in Chakwal city, is not ready to work in Kallar Kahar,` an of ficial said.

Officials said the government has tooffer special allowances to doctors, to run the centre smoothly.

A proposal to turn the trauma centre into a tehsil headquarters (THQ) hospital is also on the cards, as there is currently no THQ hospital in Kallar Kahar.

Mr Awan confirmed that the proposal is being worked out. `According to the law, a doctor at a THQ hospital in a remote area also gets special allowances along with the salary. This is why, by this method, the trauma centre could be run as a THQ hospital,` he said. He too, appealed to the medical professionals in Chakwal to offer theirservices atthe centre.

On the other hand, the Chakwal district currently does not have the funds to make the centre functional. `The district is already caught in a Rs1 billion financial deficit. The district administration isn`t able to pay the salaries of 102 trauma centre employees, once they get recruited,` a senior of ficial said.