Bhubaneswar, May 15: If everything works to plan, primary and community health centres in poor shape will be renovated.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has already asked the buildings division of public works department to upgrade and renovate the units in the city.

Municipal commissioner Krishan Kumar said the upgrade would be undertaken under the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM).

Corporation officials had said in February that they had written to the chief engineer of building division to chalk out the estimated cost for the work.

However, he is yet to reply. The civic body had again sent a reminder last week.

"We have requested the chief engineer to expedite the process and submit the estimate at the earliest by consulting with the field engineers concerned," said a senior official of the corporation.

When contacted, Satya Raanjan Sethi, chief engineer (building), said joint inspection would be conducted by officials of the corporation, the health department, the NUHM and the engineers of his department.

"According to the preliminary inspection, around Rs 10 lakh would be spent on each centre and it would be for minor works such as the repair of walls, roofs and other such things," said the chief engineer.

When asked if he had replied to the civic body, he said the inspection would be undertaken very shortly and the estimates would be provided to the corporation so that they could take action.

A survey would be conducted to check the condition of the buildings and find out which ones required urgent renovation.

In the past, there were reports of incidents where concrete and cement chunks from the roof had fallen on the patients or were found hanging from the ceiling.

"To avoid rerun of such incidents, the renovation is needed," said an official.

According to the corporation officials, there are 12 urban primary health centres and two urban community health centres under the city health society, which was formed under NUHM in 2013 to take care of urban health programmes.

The society consists of officer of the corporation, mayor and officials of the other concerned government and health department offices.

The local health centres provide immediate aid to people in the nearby areas and help reduce the pressure on big government hospitals such as Capital Hospital at Unit-VI and the BMC hospital at Old Town. While few of these health centres are in good condition and provide excellent service, others are badly maintained. Besides, the buildings of most health centres are in bad shape and need urgent repair.

"The roof of the primary health centre in our area need repair and the authorities should do it immediately," said Sk Samsuddin, a resident of Dumduma.