Adelong Batlow MPS allocated $3.957m.

"Finally some real money, but no completion before 2008"

THE new Batlow Multi Purpose Health Service, now expected to cost $11.8 million, has received an allocation of $3.957 million in Tuesday's 06/07 State Budget, which is expected to see a start on the project during the forthcoming financial year.

The tender for the MPS, a replacement for the Batlow Hospital, is expected to go out and be awarded in the final quarter of this year, subject to a satisfactory outcome to the negotiations for the railway land on which the MPS

The proposed railway land site for the new MPS is proposed to be built.

It's been a long time coming, but no doubt the Adelong/Batlow MPS committee members headed by Dianne Droscher are breathing just a little easier this week in the knowledge be that over a quarter of the required funds have now been committed by the State Government.

Up until now $545,000 has been spent on the design phase, with draft plans going on public exhibition at the Batlow Hospital four months ago, following an announcement that work on the project would begin later this year.

The remaining $7.3 million will need to be found by the government over the next two years.

The project includes ten hostel beds, eight nursing home beds, one respite bed, one palliatiative care bed and four acute care beds.

That "compares with the six acute care beds and six nursing home beds in the existing hospital.

The new MPS will also incorporate a relocated Batlow Ambulance Station, accident and emergency facilities, a community health area and nurses' residence accommodation.

Batlow has been agitating for a replacement for its old hospital building dating back to 1997. In 1999 the Sinclair Committee was confronted by a turnout of several hundred people at the Batlow Literary Institute.

The following year the MPS was promised, and many were led to believe it would be up and running by 2003.

Last year the Government said the new facility would completed in 2007, however Member for Burrinjuck Katrina Hodgkinson said yesterday it was obviously going to take longer than that.

"While I welcome the announcement, this funding commitment, is well overdue and the completion date has also blown out to at least 2008," she said.

"The Carr-lemma Labor Government first promised to have the Adelong Batlow MPS opened by 2003.

"Then on September 1, 2004 the Minister for Health said that it would be opened in 2007.

"This has been a terribly long and drawn out saga, which only serves to highlight lack of urgency within the State Labor government about addressing vital health issues.

"It was about time this project was funded. The residents of Adelong and Batlow have already had too many delays foisted on them," she added.

June 9, 2006

Tumut & Adelong Times