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Prayagraj businessman adopts 3 govt hospitals, to set up oxygen plant
The oxygen plant is to come up in a plot measuring 7,400 square meters at sector 3 of Naini Industrial Area.
A Prayagraj businessman says he is setting up a modern oxygen generation plant to supply free gas to three city-based, state-run hospitals, which experienced shortage of the life-saving gas in the past couple of weeks as its demand rose dramatically due to a sharp rise in Covid-19 patients requiring oxygen support.
A former student of Allahabad University, Umesh Jaiswal has promised lifelong supply of free oxygen to Tej Bahadur Sapru (Beli) Hospital, Dufferin Hospital and Colvin Hospital beginning August, when he expects the new oxygen plant to start operating.
The plant is to come up in a plot measuring 7,400 square meters at sector 3 of Naini Industrial Area. The district administration and Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation have helped him procure the land for the proposed plant, says Jaiswal.
While Tej Bahadur Sapru (Beli) Hospital is a dedicated Covid treatment facility with 180 beds, the other two--Dufferin and Colvin, are non-Covid hospitals with a combined capacity of around 350 beds. Dufferin is a women-only hospital.
All three hospitals put together, on an average require about 225 oxygen cylinders daily. The Beli hospital alone requires 200 of these cylinders. All three have been facing shortage of oxygen from time to time during the recent weeks, said authorities, who didn’t wish to be named. From August onwards, their oxygen needs will be taken care of by Jaiswal’s plant, with a planned capacity to refill 1100 cylinders a day, which can even go up to 1500 cylinders.
Jaiswal says his decision was driven by the “recent deaths” in the district due to shortage of oxygen. “I have a separate business, never in my wildest dream had I thought of putting up an oxygen plant,” he says. He says he was inspired on the occasion of Ramnavmi after reading about a Varanasi businessman, who decided to install an oxygen plant to help Covid patients. “Then and there, I also decided to initiate something of this kind for Prayagraj,” says Jaiswal.
Jaiswal’s primary business is road construction. He says he was advised by close friends to set up a large and modern plant if he really wanted to make a difference.
“The next day, I spoke to senior superintendent of police (SSP), Prayagraj, Sarvashresth Tripathi, who helped me meet the divisional commissioner Sanjay Goyal, who forwarded my proposal the same day to the authorities concerned,” he said.
After the district magistrate’s (DM) approval, all the required paperwork was completed swiftly. “I have given orders to a Gujarat-based company for installing an automatic oxygen synthesis plant, which can produce liquid oxygen and its gaseous form simultaneously,” he says.
The district authorities are confident that the project will take off very soon. “All support is being extended to the businessman for setting up the plant on priority. We are confident that work on it will start anytime in the coming few days,” said Bhanu Chandra Goswami, DM Prayagraj.
The plant is estimated to be built at a cost of ₹14 crore and the registry of the land it will be built on, will be done in a couple of days, Jaiswal says.
