Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on May 21 announced that 19 cancer care units will be set up in the state in collaboration with the Tata Trust and Ratan Tata, who is the chairman of major Tata group companies will lay the foundation stone.

The foundation stone will be laid centrally here on June 13, he said adding the new units would be set up to provide advanced treatment to the cancer patients of the north east. It will take about two years to complete the construction of all the 19 cancer units which will be established under the supervision of Assam Cancer Care Foundation and the Tata Trust, Sarma said. The units would be set up as a joint venture putting in Rs 1000 crore each with the total investment estimated at Rs 2,000 crore.

Tata Trusts had signed an MoU with the Assam government during the 'Advantage Assam - Global Investment Summit, 2018' held in February. The Assam Cancer Care Foundation will be headed by the state health minister and the hospitals would be based on a three-tier system and will be constructed under the L3 (Level 3), L2 (Level 2), L1 (Level 1) divisions. The L3 hospitals will maintain the basic standards of a hospital and will be located at Barpeta, Diphu, Dhubri, Jorhat, Silchar, Tezpur, Lakhimpur, Nagaon and Dibrugarh.

The L2 hospitals will maintain surgery standards and will be set up at Goalpara, Haflong, Karimganj, Kokrajhar, Golaghat, Darrang, Nalbari, Sivasagar and Tinsukia districts. The L1 hospital will have sophisticated standards and will be at Guwahati. "The L1 or a state-level cancer care institute in Guwahati will have advanced tertiary care facilities, L2 or medical colleges in the state would have facilities for chemotherapy, radiation and surgical oncology and L3 or district hospitals would have day-care, chemotherapy and radiation facilities," he said.

Sarma said the state will have two new dental colleges at Dibrugarh and Silchar with 50 seats each. "The Dental Council of India has given the clearance for the creation of two new colleges as per the budget proposals of the state government and admissions will begin from this session," he told reporters here. With this the number of dental colleges in the state will go up to three, including the Regional Dental College here, and have a total 150 seats, he said.

Sarma, who is also the Finance and PWD Minister, also announced that the upper age limit of candidates appearing for state government jobs have been increased to 44 years from 38 years from this year. Treasury challan waiver have been also implemented for grade three and four job aspirants though grade one and two candidates will have to pay the usual fees of Rs 250 for the general and Rs 150 for SC/ST/OBC candidates, he said.

The state government has also increased the wage of contractual teachers to Rs 20,000 from the earlier Rs 15,000, the minister said. The government has also announced that in the case of death during service the next of kin of employees working in government societies would be given an ex-gratia payment of Rs five lakh.