New team takes over at Mawar, pledges to re-open private hospital

The Mawar Medical Centre in Seremban.

SEREMBAN: A new team that has taken over the management of the deregistered Mawar Medical Centre here has pledged to re-open the private hospital after rehiring the bulk of its specialists who resigned in November.

Intelek Ceria Sdn Bhd senior healthcare consultant Kamaljeet Singh Gill said the company will also submit an application for a new licence to the Health Ministry in the next few days.

"We are working hard to take this hospital back to its glory days.

"The new management team has held several rounds of very productive discussions with the ministry and the specialists and we hope to re-open soon," he told reporters.

Mawar's licence was revoked on Dec 14 after it failed to furnish proof that it had enough specialists at the hospital.

However, the management was then given a month to appeal but the new team decided against this.

Kamaljeet said Intelek Ceria currently manages and operates the Putra Specialist Hospitals in Batu Pahat and Kajang and was confident of turning around the 98-bed Mawar Medical Centre.

"We have injected a substantial amount of funds since November and none of our 516 staff have been retrenched or not paid.

"As far as we are concerned, we can even re-open tomorrow because we have put all the preparations in place," he said, adding that eight of the 11 specialists who resigned were ready to serve the hospital.

The specialists quit last November after alleging they had not been paid their dues believed to run into millions of ringgit.

Following the mass resignations, the ministry gave Mawar two months to sort out its licensing issues.

The centre was told to cease operations temporarily, except for its haemodialysis wing.

Kamaljeet said the new management decided to apply for a new licence after being advised by ministry officials.

He admitted that its haemodialysis wing, with 68 machines, was still functioning without a licence for now as it could not turn away its patients.

"On Monday alone, we attended to 167 dialysis patients here. We have informed the ministry that we would have no choice but to continue treating them despite not having a licence," he said, adding

that the patients had nowhere else to go to seek treatment.

In total, Mawar has 798 patients undergoing dialysis treatment at its 14 centres nationwide.

Kamaljeet refused to comment when asked if he was aware of a winding up order filed by one of its former specialists against Pusat Hemodialisis Mawar, the holding company for Mawar Medical Centre.

The High Court is set to hear the petition on March 4.