State pays excessive rents for city hospitals: Turkish Doctors’ Union

Meltem Özgenç Hürriyet / ANKARA

Manisa City Hospital’s grounbreaking was celebarted with a ceremony held on Dec 1. A Turkish Doctors’ Union representative has said the ministry will pay eight times higher rent than initially agreed amount for the hosptial. CİHAN photo

The Turkish Doctors’ Union (TTB) said the Turkish government will pay the odds for city hospitals to be operated by private companies and will cause huge losses for the public.

“The companies that will build [city] hospitals will pay for itself with the lease to be paid by the [health] ministry. Furthermore, the ministry will continue paying rent for 23 years,” Beyazıt İlhan, secretary general of the TTB, told daily Hürriyet. “What kind of a overspending this is?”

Back in September 2013, Turkey awarded contracts worth 15.7 billion Turkish Liras ($7.8 billion) for the construction of 15 city hospitals and a health center to a series of mostly Turkish firms.

İlhan said the documents presented to a court as part of the lawsuit between the TTB and the ministry revealed “how much those planned city contractors will be a burden for the public.”

The government plans to shut down hospitals at city centers to enable their lands to be used with commercial functions and to task private companies with constructing new hospitals relatively outside the urban centers, according to İlhan.

The government plans to transfer operating health services and a number of other facilities planned at these health complexes to these companies, paying them “rent,” he said.

İlhan also underscored the amounts paid by the ministry exceeds the amount foreseen in preliminary feasibility reports.

“For example, the predicted rent price was 53 million liras for Etlik Health Complex [in Ankara], but the rent

in the contract was 276 million liras. While the foreseen rent for Manisa [City Hospital] was 8.1 million liras, the tender value was 64.25 million liras,” he said.