October 29, 2001	Monday	Shaba'an 11, 1422

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MULTAN, Oct 28: Over 50 senior posts in the Health Department in various districts of the Punjab are either lying vacant or have junior doctors working against them on officiating basis.

Meanwhile, scores of senior doctors are drawing salaries as officers on special duty without doing any work.

A well-placed source in the department told Dawn on Sunday that posts of medical superintendent, district health officer and deputy district health officer, in BS-20, 19 and 18, respectively, were lying vacant.

Instead of filling the vacancies, the department has either made senior doctors principal medical officers and assistant principal medical officers or declared them OSDs, paving the way for their juniors to work in an officiating capacity.

Fourteen hospitals have been without medical superintendents for the last couple of months. Six posts of district health officers and 30 of deputy DHOs have been vacant for a similar period.

The Leiah, Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan district headquarters hospitals have neither medical superintendents nor district health officers.

The following hospitals are without an MS: Nishtar and Civil hospitals of Multan; Sahiwal, Pakpattan, Muzaffargarh, Chiniot DHQ hospitals; Chichawatni, Arifwala, Mailsi, Duniapur and Hasilpur THQ hospitals.

Mianwali, Muzaffargarh and Sargodha have no DHO.

The posts of around 30 DDHOS and most of the incharges of district health development centres are also vacant.

Junior doctors, specially at big hospitals, find it difficult to efficiently run their institutions.

On the other hand, several OSDs are living abroad and drawing salaries in connivance with Health Department secretariat.

The source said the Multan and Rawalpindi benches of the Lahore High Court had ruled in separate cases that an officer could not be kept as an OSD for more than 30 days. He said the Health Department had neither challenged the LHC ruling nor complied with it.