HCM CITY — Slow compensation for residents affected by the construction project has delayed construction on a new facility for HCM City Hospital for Traumatology and Orthopaedics for six years.

The project to build the new facility was approved by the Prime Minister in 2010. In 2011, investors designed to build a 5,000-square metre facility, which was later expanded to more than 7,000 square metres.

HCM City People’s Committee has instructed the authorities of Bình Chánh District, where the new facility will be located, and investors to speed up the construction many times, but the project still has not yet been started.

In 2016, for instance, the committee required that the project begin in December of that year and would be expected to be completed this year.

According to the city Department of Health, construction on the new facility with 500 beds was delayed to the second quarter of last year. Its total capital is VNĐ1.7 billion (US$75,555).

However, Phụ Nữ (Women) newspaper reports that until now, no construction work has been done. The project continues to be delayed because of slow clearance and compensation.

A 60-year-old woman living on the construction site said that her family still had not yet received money for compensation so they had not moved to another place to live.

Phan Quang Trí, HCM City Hospital for Traumatology and Orthopaedics’s head, told the newspaper that nearly 2,000 patients every day visited the hospital for health examinations and treatment.

All the hospital’s rooms for health examination and surgeries as well as others are being degraded, according to Trí.

It needs a new facility to meet the demand of the high number of patients, he said, adding that patients would be in more clean, airy and hygienic rooms.

The hospital’s leaders do not know the reason why this new facility is stalled.

They want construction to begin soon for the hospital to be able to improve the quality of health examinations and treatment as well as provide professional technical training.

Bình Chánh District’s People’s Committee has not yet explained the delay of the project and the slowness in compensation. —VNS