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LAHORE, Dec 21: The Punjab government will recruit 4,109 doctors by the end of February next year, to work at the basic health units, dispensaries and rural health centres.
The doctors to be recruited for the BHUs and dispensaries will be given five-year contracts with a salary of Rs12,000 per month. The doctors to be appointed at the rural heath centres and tehsil headquarters hospitals will, however, get a regular civil servant’s salary.
The contract for the BHU and dispensary jobs would be renewable for another five years. On completing 10 years of service, the doctors concerned would be absorbed into the regular service.
The decisions taken in a meeting chaired by Punjab Governor Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (retired) at the Governor’s House, were announced by Health Minister Prof Mahmood Ahmad Chaudhry at a press conference at his office on Friday afternoon.
The BHUs and dispensaries in the rural areas have been virtually defunct for want of doctors prepared to work for a Rs5,000 salary package.
Prof Chaudhry said a doctor each would be posted at 2,489 BHUs and 213 dispensaries and three doctors each at the 293 rural health centres in the province.
He said about 8,000 auxiliary staff would also be recruited to assist the doctors. He said five paramedical workers would be recruited for each BHU from within the respective district. The salaries of the auxiliary staff would be paid by the districts governments concerned, he said.
He said the Health Department would advertise the job specific non-transferable posts immediately. Applicants from the district of posting would be given preference.
He said the appointments would be made by five-member selection committees in the districts. Each committee would comprise the district coordination officer, the executive district officer (Health), the DHQ hospital medical superintendent and a representative each of the district Nazim and the army monitoring team.
After completing the appointments in rural health delivery organizations, he said the department would seek their input regarding the requirement for equipments and medicines.
NEW POSTS: The minister said the government had also created 500 new posts for the FCPS Part-I students in teaching hospitals. The students would be paid a Rs4,000 stipend per month.
About 500 FCPS Part-I students were already getting the stipend. More than 450 students were working in various teaching hospitals in the province without the stipend.
The minister said he was working on a proposal to reserve 20 per cent of the income from institutional private practice for junior doctors and other staff.
Under the new rules for autonomous health institutions, he said, private patients would pay a special fee. He said the income would be spent on the welfare of the needy patients and on repair and procurement of equipment.
The minister said the government had also decided to empower chief executives of the autonomous health institutions to spend their income on repair and procurement of equipment for emergency services.
He said the department had called a meeting of the chief executives at the Civil Secretariat on Monday to finalize each institution’s repair and procurement requirements.
The minister said the 17 teaching hospitals had a saving of around Rs600 million.
