The claims and counter-claims on the issue of eviction of Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH) from the Health Department’s property at Lawmali here continue to hog the limelight.
A day after Director of Health Services (MI) Dr. Aman War alleged that IIPH had been asked to vacate the old NIFT building as the property had been allotted to Meghalaya Aids Control Society (MACS), IIPH Registrar Dr. Tiameren Jamir said that the event which occurred on May 27 has been reported incorrectly.
In a statement issued today, Dr. Jamir denied Dr. War’s allegations that he (Dr. Jamir) misbehaved and abused the Project Director and Deputy Director of MACS.
“At no point in time has any official from IIPH Shillong behaved in the manner described by the DHS. We were cordial when we were summoned by the MACS Project Director. We have offered to have her look at the notification dated 2nd November, 2022 vide No Health, 231/2021/14 where it was clearly mentioned that ‘the old NIFT building at Pasteur Hills, Lawmali Road, Shillong is to be handed over to the Director, IIPH with immediate effect’ and that IIPHS is to ‘take over and occupy the said building without further delay’. But she said that the notification was not valid,” Dr. Jamir said.
“We were not sure as to why she (MACS Project Director) said this as no further communication was received by our office in this regard. I offered to have her speak with the signing authority of the said notification, to which she refused and said she would rather speak with the DHS instead. We agreed and also dispersed very cordially. Therefore, we were quite taken aback when the DHS arrived at the campus very agitated and asked the students to “Get Out”. Some of the female students were reduced to tears by this behaviour. We offered the DHS the same courtesy even though he seemed very agitated and to prevent the matter from escalating further we decided to voluntarily vacate the premises despite the notification,” Dr. Jamir added.
Stating that IIPH did not occupy the building “illegally” as mentioned by the DHS, Dr. Jamir also said that the office of the DHS (MI) has been marked in the notification.
Dr. Jamir also said that IIPH Shillong was set up to develop public health capacity for the North East region and a formal memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and Government of Meghalaya way back in 2008, wherein the Government of Meghalaya had assured to provide infrastructure support to IIPH Shillong.
“We would also like to highlight that the DHS (MI) is an ex officio member of the Board of Governors of IIPH Shillong among others. We would like to clearly state that we did not specifically request the government to allot the old NIFT campus to us. Rather we had asked for a suitable space to run our courses and research activities based on the MoU. We are a growing organisation with capacity to support the efforts of the Governments through teaching and research in public health and government support in this endeavour will be much appreciated,” Dr. Jamir concluded.
