PESHAWAR, Jan 3: The government has decided in principle to abolish the posts of chief executives (CEs) at teaching hospitals to lessen the burden on the national kitty, officials in the provincial health department say.

They argued on Friday that the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s government in the NWFP was convinced that there had been no improvement in the performance of the three teaching hospitals— Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Hyatabad Medical Complex (HMC)—, though their chief executives drew very high salaries.

The officials said that three years ago, the government had appointed each executive against over Rs100,000 per month and other facilities, and added that there was a net expenditure of Rs700,000 on each of these officers per month, which was several times more than the salaries awarded to the professors who formerly worked as administrators of these hospitals.

The expenditure incurred on the CEs, the officials said, would be diverted to the welfare of patients, purchase of drugs and recruitment of new doctors, which would help increase facilities to the patients and reduce the number of unemployed doctors in the province.

They said the CEs would either be replaced with management committees, comprising senior professors, or the former system would be put in place, under which a senior-most professors had been made principal of the Khyber Medical College and three other senior teachers had been made administrators of the LRH, KTH and HMC.

Those appointed as the administrators drew their routine salaries according to their grades and, besides taking care of administrative affairs of the hospitals, they also regularly attended the OPDs, operation theatres etc., the officials added.

Presently, two of the three teaching hospitals in the city were being run by the acting CEs. The one at the KTH, the official said, had also shown no improvement, but since the KTH was relatively a better hospital in the province, the officer took credit himself for its betterment.