The new hospital “St. Luke the Apostle”, which is being built by Chinese companies in Doboj, in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), will not be completed until the end of September this year.
That deadline was defined by the annex to the contract that the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the entity Republika Srpska (RS) signed at the end of 2022 with companies from China – China Sinopharm International Corporation and Shan Xi Construction Investment Group.
During the last tour of the construction site in July of this year, Entity Health Minister Alen Seranic and Deputy General Director of Chinese Sinofarm Yuan Zhuangjuni hinted that the hospital will not be ready until September 30th.
Rain is the main culprit?
Heavy rainfall slowed down the completion of the remaining construction works, Seranic stated as the reason.
The director of the Chinese company China Sinopharm International Corporation Zhuangjun said that the project is in the final stages of works and installation of equipment.
“We look forward to next year when the local population will have access to first-class health care,” Zhuangjun said.
However, they did not specify a new date for the completion of the remaining works and the equipping of the health facility, which is being built on nearly three hectares of land next to the M-17 highway, which connects the north and south of BiH.
The deputy director of the Doboj hospital, Nebojsa Maric, said that objective circumstances are the reason why not all work on the new facility has been completed yet.
“The workers of our institution, as well as the patients, will realize the moment they enter this institution that it was worth the wait. In any case, the quality of health care in the entire Doboj region will be significantly higher. The conditions in the hospital where we currently work are not adequate for the 21st century,” Maric stated.
Second deadline extension for Chinese companies
The contractor was introduced to the work in December 2019. The completion of all works was scheduled for 36 months. This means that the hospital should have been completed at the end of 2022, when the end of September of this year was set as the new deadline, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
