The Metropolitan Hospital that is to be built in Northern Bucharest will be ready in “maximum 20 years,” according to government spokesman Nelu Barbu.

Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea insisted on this project several times, saying that it is necessary to build this hospital in the capital. On Wednesday, March 21, the government approved via an Emergency Ordinance the transfer of a land plot in Northern Bucharest from the public domain of the state into the public domain of Bucharest for the construction of the Metropolitan Hospital.

“The land needed to build the Metropolitan Hospital has an area of over 47,000 sqm, it is located on the Pipera road in District 2 and passes from the public domain of the state and the management of the Romanian Television Society into the public domain of Bucharest, and the deadline for this investment is of maximum 20 years,” Barbu said after the government’s meeting on Wednesday.

When the journalists asked him if the “maximum 20 years” deadline is correct, the government spokesman said this is what he understood from the normative act.

However, Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea said on Thursday that the hospital would be ready in a "reasonable" time.

"The hospital will be built in the reasonable time that it takes to build any other hospital of this size, of 1,000-1,200 beds, in Europe, and not in 20 years, as stipulated by the Ministry of Finance, I repeat, as an precautionary bureaucratic measure for the land transfer period," she said, according to local Digi24.

The Bucharest City Hall has repeatedly asked for the transfer of this land plot located at 63-65 Pipera road. In February, the General Council of Bucharest also approved the project by which the City Hall takes over a piece of land currently hosting a depot of transport company RATB, located at 55 Pipera road, for the construction of the Metropolitan Hospital. The project was previously blocked after the opposition’s representatives in the General Council voted against it. At that time, Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea also initiated an online petition aimed at raising signatures for the construction of the Metropolitan Hospital in the city.

The investment in the Metropolitan Hospital is estimated at EUR 300 million. Bucharest’s District 1 City Hall also wants to invest around EUR 300 million in a new hospital to be built on the Bucharest-Targoviste road.

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Gov.ro)