A sprawling 1.20 lakh sq ft parking plaza adjacent to Jupiter Hospital in Thane, once transformed into a vital Covid-19 field hospital, now lies in a state of complete neglect. What was once a symbol of emergency response during the peak of the pandemic is today a dust-covered wasteland—exposing glaring lapses in post-pandemic asset management by the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC).
Heaps of unused hospital beds, ICU equipment, and ambulances—once urgently procured and deployed to save lives—now sit abandoned under layers of dust in the very parking lot that was repurposed as a Covid care center. According to a source familiar with the matter, the makeshift hospital was established in 2020, outfitted with around 1,000 general hospital beds and 200 ICU beds equipped with ventilators, each costing approximately ₹7 lakh.
FPJ has photographs which shows that, in addition to the beds, several ambulances—including both four-wheelers and two-wheelers—as well as private cars purchased during the pandemic, are still parked in the facility, unused and unattended.
“A minimum of ₹10 crore was invested by the TMC to set up this emergency facility,” the source said. “But since the pandemic subsided, all of the infrastructure—beds, ventilators, ambulances—has been left to rot in this government-owned parking space, with no maintenance or accountability from the authorities,” source said.
The site, once critical to Thane’s Covid response, now starkly contrasts the situation at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital in Kalwa, where patients face a persistent shortage of hospital beds. The irony of desperately needed resources lying idle a few kilometers away has not gone unnoticed by citizens and healthcare activists.
Sandeep Malvi, the Additional Commissioner of Thane, who had played a key role in setting up the Covid center at the time said, Actually these beds were used for covid hospital but after covid the beds are kept at parking plaza. We have used maximum beds for TMC hospitals and rest of beds are to be distributed to the civil hospital and the PHCs. We have written to the concerned authorities for the same and awaiting the response. Once we get the consent immediately we will distribute these beds."
