PESHAWAR, April 4: In apparent contravention of the provisions of the Local Government Ordinance, 2001, the provincial government bypassed director-general health, NWFP, in effecting postings and transfers of more than 290 senior doctors, sources told Dawn.

According to the LGO, postings and transfers of senior doctors are supposed to be done by the director-general health.

However, in a clear violation of the LGO, more than 290 doctors working in grades 17, 18 and 19 got reshuffled in accordance with a notification issued by the secretary of the health department, NWFP.

Provincial health minister Inayatullah Khan and NWFP director-general health Brig Habibur Rehman (retired) are at odds with the former wanting to get the latter replaced.

In this respect, said the sources, the recently sent four letters of the provincial government to the federal defence ministry remained unattended, leaving the working relationship between the DG health and the provincial health minister at the lowest ebb.

Differences between the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal-led provincial government and several of the district governments have endangered smooth functioning of the local government system introduced by the military government. The district Nazims of some 16 district governments have already formed a group to move President Gen Pervez Musharraf in their attempt to win back part of their administrative powers recently clipped by the provincial government.

Apart from the recently made postings and transfers in the NWFP health department, the education department also exercised the same functions in similar fashion, apparently, in negation of the provisions of the LGO, 2001.

According to sources, only the DG health’s office was authorised under the prescribed rules to transfer the doctors and other health professionals, except for the teaching cadre.

Meanwhile, these transfers have further confirmed the reports of row between the secretary health and the DG health, said an official.

The official argued that the DG health’s office was responsible to maintain the service files of all the doctors and was better entrenched about the track record of the doctors, but he was ignored altogether.

The official also claimed that many doctors would go to courts against their transfer orders, because, several of them have been transferred who had not completed their three-year tenure at their place of posting.

Under the law, the secretary health was required to formulate policies in consultation with the government and forward those for implementation to the DG health office.

Many lady doctors had been transferred without providing their replacement, which had also embarrassed the people, said the official, adding that the list bearing the names of the doctors who were transferred also contained a lot of errors, which has also created problems for the officials.

He further said that these transfers would create administrative problems for the government and several would be succeeded in getting cancelled their transfer orders from the courts.

Transfers and postings on such a massive scale would serve no purpose and would create more problems for the doctors as well as the government.