The renovation of Oro General Hospital in Irepodun local government area of Kwara is at 85 percent completion and will soon be delivered to the State Government, the project manager has said.
“Our delivery is very close. Our time schedule now is to ensure that the wards and the main operating system of the hospital is in place first to move doctors to their permanent offices. We will then do the theatre last to avoid any infection into the place. All we have left now is the theatre and administrative block,” the project manager Architect Theophilus Kusimo told reporters during a visit to the site.
“We are towards our completion. The project is at 85% completion generally. At the moment, what we are doing is putting our fittings in place. Our electricals have been done 90%, our plumbing fittings are 70% done. Areas that we want to hand over in the next three weeks are places we are working on presently. Painting job has been done 70% for outside while internal is 80%.
“We have five main structures: wards, operating theatres, pharmacy, laboratory and administrative quarters with general store. We also have electrical and laundry sections. That’s the area we are working on at the moment.”
The Project Manager explained that the intervention of the state government was already giving the facility a face-lift, saying that his team met a completely dilapidated building which had been in bad shape for many years.
“We came in to meet a real dilapidated building where the whole place was in tartars, in total bad shape, and reptiles and rodents everywhere. Because it is a renovation project, we had to tear down almost all the parts of the building into pieces, do new roofs, new windows, new tiling, new doors. In fact, it is like doing a new project apart from bringing down the whole walls.”
He said the work required them to be very meticulous without rushing things because of the nature of the facility.
“It has been challenging because it is not a project that is open directly for us to work at our will. This is an hospital and it was not shut down for understandable reasons of its importance in this axis. So, we are having to do a lot of makeshifts, such as requesting the movement of patients from one ward to another point. When we did the first set of buildings, we moved them to that building and we are now back in the buildings we moved them out from. That is what we have been doing,” he said.
Kusimo commended the Oro community for their accommodation and support, saying his team is enjoying extreme support from the people of Oro Kingdom.
He added that that their activities in Oro General Hospital are with 95% local content so that the people of the communities can have a feel of the ongoing project.
“We are enjoying the support of the host community. They are very happy with the project. They come here weekly to do their own assessment and they are extremely very happy, knowing fully that we are doing the best for them, we are not cutting corners. They come for inspection with their experts too. Over 95% of our workers are actually from this axis,” Kusimo added.