October 16, 2006	Monday	Ramazan 22, 1427

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PESHAWAR, Oct 15: The NWFP government’s decision to abolish the stipend of trainee medical officers will adversely affect the postgraduate training of the doctors in the province, officials said.

“Last week, the provincial government issued a notification wherein it had ordered the abolition of monthly stipend of trainee medical officers (TMOs),” said a source at the health secretariat. The decision, sources added would adversely affect the postgraduate training of the doctors.

The notification to abolish the stipend of the TMOs is the result of misunderstanding and there is a hope that the government would revoke its decision.

The sources said that a letter sent to the Chief Secretary Ijaz Ahmad Qureshi by the Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) a month back had sated that there was an urgent need to increase the number of TMOs seats in the three teaching hospitals of the province. There are 425 TMOs in the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, who hitherto drew Rs10,000 as monthly stipend.

Of the total number of these TMOs, 225 happened to have graduated from the privately-established medical colleges, whereas the rest of 200 from the public sector medical institutes, sources said, adding that due to the increasing requirement of patients and trend of specialisation among the doctors besides the establishment of several medical colleges in the province, it was the need of the hour to increase the seats for TMOs in the hospital.

“Actually, the chief secretary misunderstood the letter by the PGMI and recommended to the chief minister the abolition of the TMOs’ stipend, which is definitely a decision that would adversely affect the tertiary care in the city,” said a source.

He said that it was impossible to make the TMOs work without stipend, because they ran the wards in the hospitals round-the-clock.

Secondly, the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP), which is a supervisory body for postgraduate training of doctors, do not accredit the unpaid TMOs. “If the decision was not rescinded immediately, it would deprive hundreds of TMOs from appearing in the postgraduate examination conducted by the CPSP,” said sources.

According to them, the PGMI had got 120 additional seats for TMOs only last year and was making efforts to increase the number further. Most of the doctors were getting postgraduate training in hospitals in Punjab because of more seats there.

“Demand for postgraduate training by doctors had almost doubled during the past five years,” said a source.