2024-03-20 19:11:31
• All the procedures for its operation have now been launched
With a decision issued yesterday and posted on Diaygeia by the Decentralized Administration of the Aegean, the legality of decision No. 69/2024 (AD: 6ΑΛ27Λξ-ΚΕΣ) of the Regional Committee of the South Aegean Region, on the subject: “Approval of the conclusion of a Program Agreement between the Region of South of the Aegean and of the 2nd DYPE of Piraeus & the Aegean for the operation: “Maturation of a public contract file for the construction of a Radiotherapy Center at the General Hospital of Rhodes”.
After this specific approval, the way is opened for the satisfaction of a long-standing request of the citizens of the Dodecanese which found the response of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis with the commitment he made personally during his visit to Rhodes on May 12, 2023.
This is a project whose financing and construction is shouldered by the South Aegean Region, in order to deliver it to the General Hospital of Rhodes and the Ministry of Health.
On the way to its auction, however, complex obstacles have appeared, stemming from past omissions that block its development. Among them, two stand out as the most critical today: the ownership of the land where it will be built and the licensing issue due to the lack of environmental licensing of the existing infrastructure of the General Hospital of Rhodes.
These two issues and their resolution dominated the long meeting that unfolded in early February at the office of the Regional Governor of the South Aegean, Giorgos Hatzimarkos, together with the Minister of Shipping and Island Policy and Member of Parliament for the Dodecanese, Yiannis Pappas, the Commander of the 2nd Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Christos Roilos, the Deputy Governor of Health, Nikos Tsoukalas and the Governor of the General Hospital of Rhodes, Stavros Tsiantis.
Optimism prevailed with the completion of the work as solutions are being launched in the immediate future for both issues, solutions that will remove the obstacles bringing closer the tendering of the project.
Specifically for the ownership issue, where the building of the General Hospital of Rhodes still lacks a title deed and a building permit, after 30 years of operation, the Minister of Health, Adonis Georgiadis, is working on a legislative provision, which definitively resolves this issue and is scheduled to be introduced directly in a bill of the Ministry of Health for a vote in the Parliament.
With this arrangement, the land will be transferred to the Public Law Legal Entity “Rhodes Andreas Papandreou General Hospital”, putting an end to the disorder since the establishment of the Hospital, as was also discussed in the recent visit of the Regional Governor to the Minister’s office on this specific issue.
The second major issue that arose on the way to the tendering of the project by the South Aegean Region and is blocking the developments is the lack of environmental licensing of the General Hospital of Rhodes, since according to the current legislation the existence of environmental licensing is a condition for the construction of any addition on that.
During Friday’s meeting, the exit plan from this deadlock was decided. The Region of the South Aegean will enter into a programmatic cooperation agreement with the 2nd DYPE and the General Hospital of Rhodes with the object of covering with full environmental licensing both the existing infrastructure that houses the hospital and the new project-addition to the existing building, the radiotherapy center.
Apart from the mentioned obstacles from pre-existing omissions and bad texts, the technical services of the South Aegean Region are all ready to proceed with the technical project, i.e. tendering and construction, as soon as these are resolved.