June 13, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1423

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LARKANA, June 12: The Larkana district health office is in a fix as to how to run 41 basic health units (BHUs) in the absence of new schedule of expenditure (NSE), sources told Dawn here the other day.

Besides, the Sindh government has asked the district health officials not to take over the possession of the nine newly-constructed BHUs in the district.

Sources said the Sindh health department run around 300 BHUs for which not asingle paisa had been allocated in the budget.

Sources said that Sindh government sanctioned regular budget only for 65 health facilities run by Larkana district health office but the district government wanted the health office to make functional the 41 non-SNE BHUs by making ad hoc arrangements of reshuffling staff and available budgetary provisions.

This situation had not only affected the overall performance of the health office but had also put an extra burden on its shoe string budget, sources said.

These non-SNE BHUs are being run in Larkana (6), Shahdadkot (2), Ratodero (10), Mirokhan (4), Kambar, (5), Warah (10) and Dokri (4).

If regular budget was not earmarked for these BHUs, sources said, it would become very difficult for the district health officials to keep on running them.

Thus the population of the areas would be deprived of basic health facilities, sources said and added that it would also discourage the fresh breed of elected representatives.

Lately in a meeting the health officials declined to take over more BHUs for they had no funds to keep them operational, sources said.

On the other hand the building department was persistently asking for relieving it of the responsibility of looking after the completed BHUs, according to sources.

It was learnt that the government was considering transfer of some dispensaries to NGOs to run them under public-private partnership. In this connection district Nazims are being consulted by the Sindh health department.