RAWALPINDI, March 27: The Punjab government has refused to pay salaries to the staff of autonomous hospitals under the revised pay structures, sources told Dawn here on Wednesday.

The Punjab finance department has instead advised the hospitals to pay the increased portion of the salaries from their own receipts.

The government had announced raise in the salaries of the government servants last year in June. However, this decision became effective from December.

The employees of the autonomous institutions accordingly started getting increased salaries, as no instructions to the contrary were issued.

However, the finance department claims that it has issued the directive that the staff of these institutions will not be getting the raise in the salaries and it will be upto the hospitals to pay the increased salaries from their own budgets.

The hospitals’ administrations maintained that they were bound to pay their staff according to the revised salary structure. Otherwise, the matter would have been taken to the court by the employees, they added.

The decision has resulted in squeezing of the services budget — initially spent on purchase of medicines, diagnostic kits and other material required for patients — by almost 45 per cent, the sources said.

The Rawalpindi Medical College (RMC) and allied hospitals will alone be paying Rs32.5 million during the six months from January to June 2002.

The provincial health department, sources said, had also objected to this decision of the finance department and had asked it to review the directions and release additional funds for this purpose.

The health department is of the opinion that poor patients will suffer the most since the amount from which the finance department is asking the hospitals to pay the increased salaries was primarily utilized for the treatment of patients.

The health officials say the government will have to increase the budget for salaries and that the patients cannot be sacrificed for this purpose.

Paying salaries from the services budget is not a viable option, they maintained, and added that otherwise the government should change the status of these hospitals by allowing them to charge the patients according to the market rates.

The staff of these hospitals is the liability of the provincial government and their services have not yet been seconded to the autonomous institutions. Therefore, the increased salaries will have to be paid by the provincial government, the health department officials said.

The autonomy rules were promulgated in January 2002.

Sources in the local hospitals said the administrators of the hospitals had decided that in case the provincial government did not pay the increased salaries, they would revert back to the old pay structure even if it would lead them to litigation.