Meghalaya: Public Private Partnership mode for Shillong medical college

The Meghalaya Government is all set to pursue a public-private partnership (PPP) route for the construction of the long-awaited Shillong medical college.

In this regard, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma informed that the Shillong Medical College on the PPP mode is on the cards and the state government is in talks with different agencies that ‘have good track records’ after they have called off an agreement with the KPC group.

“Discussions are on with a couple of them and we expect a positive outcome soon,” said CM Sangma.

CM said that the PPP mode is important for a medical college as the entire investment comes from the private partner.

“If the government invests then there are certain seats that come to us but at the end of the day the running of the medical college, which is very important, should be done professionally and more importantly the cost involved in running it– these few factors are very important for us to keep in mind while we move ahead for a medical college,” the Chief Minister added.

“Therefore, a PPP mode seems to be a practical way of moving forward, and the condition that we have with certain of the agencies that we are talking to is that investments will be made by the government of Meghalaya, in some cases, only the land will be given from the state government and a large number of seats will then come to our people and will be able to put in students as the selection process will come to government of Meghalaya,” he further said.

Stating that running a medical college by the government is something which is a very tough job, the chief minister said, “I have always maintained that from the government point of view our focus should be on policymaking, governance, monetary, infrastructure and those areas we are focusing on.”