PESHAWAR, Nov 23: Senior doctors and consultants who had resigned in protest against introduction of the institution-based practice system in government hospitals have demanded that they should be reinstated following the passage of a bill in the NWFP Assembly lifting the ban on private practice by doctors.

Under the institution-based practice (IBP) system introduced by then NWFP governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah in 2001, doctors had been asked either to do private practice in government hospitals in the evening or quit their jobs.

“We had resigned in protest against the IBP system and now when it has been abolished, the government should also restore our services,” said a senior consultant who along with 40 other doctors had quit their jobs.

He said that after their resignation, different wards of hospitals had suffered because the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council had derecognised them, adding that the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan had refused to allow students of certain branches of medical sciences to take postgraduate examinations.

The MMA government had planned three years ago to reinstate the doctors who had resigned, but it did not happen because doctors who had subsequently been promoted protested against the plan.

The NWFP Assembly’s standing committee on health had recommended to the government to end the IBP system and reinstate the senior doctors, said a paediatric surgeon.

“If the government can implement the standing committee’s recommendation about abolition of the IBP system, then it is also morally bound to reinstate the doctors,” he said.“We had struggled against the new system because it was aimed at destroying hospitals and medical institutes,” said an orthopaedic surgeon, adding that he and other doctors had been forced by the then governor to resign or accept the IBP system.