Mahagun Moderne's voluntary covid centre runs into a bureaucratic wall

Mahagun Moderne’s voluntary covid centre runs into a bureaucratic wall

NOIDA: A Covid care facility with oxygen support that was to come up at Mahagun Moderne housing society in Sector 78 has run into a bureaucratic wall.

The backdrop is an order issued by city magistrate Umashankar Singh to the Noida Authority to take charge of the project, which was initially a voluntary exercise by Mahagun’s Apartment Owners’ Association (AOA) to cater to the 10,000-plus residents of the society as well as those living in the nearby 7X sectors.

Singh’s department even pasted a notice of the order on the walls of the society’s playschool on Wednesday. “We have directed that the facility will be run by the Noida Authority and no one else,” Singh said.

However, Noida CEO Ritu Maheshwari on Thursday told TOI, “The Authority is not a health department that it can run or be ordered by the city magistrate to run hospitals. The project will have to be executed by the AOA.”

Stuck in the middle is the AOA of the housing society, which has pooled in resources to set up the Covid facility, including 50 beds, an oxygen plant and a compressor, and also empanelled a list of doctors.

Adding to the problems is the builder’s refusal to allow the AOA to run the facility at the playschool on the society premises.

The builder has already issued a press release, saying they have handed over the playschool to the Noida Authority.

“We have handed over the facility to the Noida Authority because they are facing some shortage of beds and we will let them operate till June 30, after which we want to take the facility back,” said Amit Jain, director of Mahagun Developers.

The school has been shut since the lockdown first began in 2020.

Sandeep Chauhan, Mahagun’s AOA president, said, “We had first approached the Noida Authority to support us for this project, but they didn’t agree. We next wrote to the builder but got no response. To date, 17 residents have lost their lives to Covid-19. This is a shameful act in these times of crisis.”