Construction of Pakistan's first nursing university will begin soon: ministry.

Byline: Ikram Junaidi

ISLAMABAD -- After four years of no progress, construction on Pakistan's first nursing university will begin soon, the Ministry of National Health Services has said.

The ministry's spokesperson Sajid Shah told Dawn that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed between the government of Bahrain and the National Logistics Cell (NLC), owing to which construction will start soon. He said it was decided to expedite the process despite the spread of the coronavirus.

The nursing university, which will be built with funding from the Kingdom of Bahrain, will cater to 2,000 students with 500 annual admissions. It will also have residential facilities for 1,000 women students on campus.

Mr Shah said that NHS ministry has obtained possession of the land on which the university will be built after paying dues to the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and has approved a PC-I to build a fence around the land and obtain utility services.

Bahrain's King Hamad had announced in 2014 that he would fund the nursing university as a gift for Pakistan.

It was decided that the government of Pakistan would arrange land and utility services for the facility, while the government of Bahrain would fund its construction.

The King Hamad University of Nursing and Associated Medical Sciences will be built on 237 kanals of land on Park Road in Chak Shahzad.

In July 2016, a delegation from Bahrian visited Islamabad to finalise the project, but it did not begin because of the unavailability of land.

In January 2017, then prime minister Nawaz Sharif laid the foundation stone at the university's proposed site accompanied by dignitaries from Bahrain, but possession of the land was not obtained because 700 people filed applications with the CDA stating that they owned the land in question, which was located in the constituency of the then minister for capital administration and development division (CADD) Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry.

With the project continuously delayed, then prime...