YANGON----Construction project of the 600-bed hospital to be built on a 17-acre wide old garbage dump in Tharkayta Township, Yangon Region has already been suspended, says San Kyu, Central Executive Committee member of the Federation of Myanmar Engineering Societies.
“The experts held a meeting on the hospital construction project yesterday. They suggested that it wasn’t suitable for an emergency hospital. The experts also said that the authorities should carry out the project only after taking more time. The Yangon Region Chief Minister also agreed with their suggestion. That’s why we canceled the project. We are going to put up a fence. The chief minister had looked at a new place for the hospital,” said San Kyu.
Environmentalist Win Myo Thu also posted on his Facebook account that the authorities should check the air quality index before construction of the hospital whether there are hazardous gases such as VOC and Methane. These gases may cause complications for the lung. Moreover, the gas can sit in the old garbage dump for 50 years. If authorities are to measure the level of above gases during the rainy season, the gas level may decrease. If there is no systemic data keeping, it isn’t suitable to provide data results even after measuring gas levels twice. Moreover, there is no need to dig the soil deeply for construction of the temporary hospital. There has been suggestion that there was no impact of Soil Contamination and Toxic leachate groundwater. When the authorities build the temporary hospital, there will be movements of humans and vehicles and vibrations of hospital equipment.There will then be a need to restructure the ground stability. In Myanmar, there are no systematic landfills at the garbage dumps while international countries practiced systematic dumping of their wastes by pumping possibly toxic water from the garbage dump so that it will not seep underground and into the water. Finally, he suggested that the best thing to do was to cancel the project.
The plan of a 600-bed hospital was aimed at housing more COVID-19 patients and to store the extra equipment from the temporary hospitals if Myanmar can later control the coronavirus.
San Kyu also said that at least 7 acres of large land was needed to build the hospital. If 600 to 700 patients are to stay at the hospital, the number of designated doctors will also rise. Thus the need for wide acres.
There has been precedence similar to this case as a hospital was to be built at the Ywale Cemetery, which was then converted into a garbage dump.
