19 October 2004	Tuesday	04 Ramazan 1425

KARACHI, Oct 18: Hundreds of poor patients visiting Out Patient Department and more than 40 patients admitted to the Sindh Government Hospital, Saudabad (Malir) are facing immense hardship as they are not being provided free medicines from zakat funds for the last 10 days.

Medical Superintendent Dr Bashir Shaikh said on Monday that the government had dissolved zakat committees on August 24 this year and since then, new chairman of the local zakat committee for hospital had not been nominated by the higher authorities.

He said an allocation of Rs0.8 million had been made on account of zakat for the hospital for the current fiscal and the same was released, but after dissolution of the committees, no payment had been made to medical store for providing free medicines to deserving patients as any such application required signature of the committee's chairman, besides that of the concerned MS.

"As many as 1,600 patients visit OPD every day and more than 50 per cent of them deserved zakat. At present, 80 patients have been admitted to the hospital and half of their number needs free medicines from zakat," he said.

The hospital caters to the medical needs of some two million people residing in Malir Town and villages falling between Malir Town and Gadap Town, besides some other areas. The monthly bill of its medical store viz-a-viz assistance through zakat fund comes up to Rs0.1 million.

Dr Shaikh revealed that the owner of the medical store had stopped delivering free medicines under zakat fund as the dues outstanding against the zakat committee had accumulated to more than Rs0.15 million. -PPI