RAWALPINDI: Work on the Rawalpindi Institute of Urology (RIU) remains slow due to the shortage of funds and may not complete even at the end of this year, further escalating the project cost.

The construction of the 400-bed hospital on 96 kanals started in 2012 and the project was supposed to be ready by January 2014.

However, the worl( slowed down after the provincial government diverted all the development funds to the Rawalpindi-Islamabad metro bus project in 2014 and then to the Orange Train in Lahore.

The government had later set the deadline of June 30, 2016, to complete the hospital but officials said it would take another year to get ready.

So far, Rs420 million have been spent on the construction of the building on Murree Road near Nawaz Sharif Park. Due to the delay, the cost increased from Rs2 billion to Rs3.4 bil-lion.

A senior official of the Punjab finance department told Dawn that funds for the project would not be released this fiscal year. He said due to mega projects in Lahore, the government had imposed a 15pc cut on funds for all other projects in the province. He said ongoing projects launched during the previous tenure of the PML-N government in the province would take a year as the government wanted to complete the Orange Train and other projects.

An official of the health department said after the completion of the construction work, the procurement of machinery such as dialysis machines and kidney transplant electro-medical equipment would start. The recruitment of staff and doctors for the hospital would begin once the government gives the go-ahead to the department.

`The project has been in a slow pace as the government added one additional floor to the approved building plan. After this decision, the PC-I was revised and submitted to theplanning commission for approval.

He said funds had been stopped for the project but the PML-N government had promised to release some amount during its previous tenure.

However, the provincial government later spent the available funds on the construction of Chandni Chowk and 6th Road flyovers and was left with no money for the public healthcare system.

When contacted, PML-N former MNA Hanif Abbasi, who started the project in 2012, said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Thursday approved the additional work of the project at a meeting in Islamabad. He said the chief minister asked the concerned departments to speed up the work and make it a state-of-the-art hospital even if it takes another year.

He said the provincial government would release Rs100 million in the current fiscal year and the approved funds of Rs1.6 billion for the procurement of machinery would be released in the next fiscal year.