LARKANA:Two out of three laundry machines at Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH) are dysfunctional since over a year, PPI learnt here on Monday.
Pressing and drying machines installed along with these laundry machines were never used for lack of trained staff despite installation due to which both have become rusted and useless.
These machines were procured from Japan during the regime of former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during 70s when 300-bed capacity Teaching Block was constructed for students of Chandka Medical College (CMC). These huge machines are working automatically with pressing of one button and clothes are washed in a smooth and better way.
Clothes are dried by the staff by keeping on earth for complete drying and are supplied without pressing. The machines remained packed in their original cartons since their arrival and nobody took the pains to get them installed until Dr. Hussain Bux Memon was posted at CMCH as Medical Superintendent (MS) in 1999-20.
When Dr. Memon came to know about non-installation of these essential machines, he personally took great efforts and not only got them installed but made them functional within few days by posting required staff where all the uniforms used in various Operation Theaters (OTs) by doctors, technicians, bed sheets, pillow covers, blankets etc. were regularly collected from the OTs, wards and offices, washed and then supplied back next day.
Dr. Memon at that time had said that those machines could wash clothes of entire Larkana city if run round the clock basis. Credible sources at the CMCH said that only one remaining machine was entirely unable to meet the need of the hospital as the CMCH had expanded to 1500 beds with over 25 operation theaters wherein operations were carried out daily.
Some OTs are running round the clock such as Shaikh Zayed Hospital for Women and emergency OTs. Over 1000 clothes, including towels used by doctors, are daily washed by this single machine, staff claimed, which is a cumbersome job.
Sindh Government has imposed embargo on its employees not to talk to media depriving them of their right to freedom of expression, hence, nobody was ready to speak to this scribe on record, but most of them complained that CMCH is an orphan health care institution which the rulers have forgotten to improve its working.