KARACHI, Dec 13: Despite the common belief that public sector hospitals and health-care facilities badly need doctors and nurses, the Sindh health department has been unable to appoint and post skilled medical personnel to the vacant posts during the last couple of years.
After a long time, the health department managed a kick off of the recruiting process of specialists, doctors, nurses and paramedical and technical staff for government district and provincial health-care centres in the last few months of the PML (Q)-MQM government, which completed its term about three weeks ago. But the process had to be stopped for want of another go-ahead signal from the caretaker health minister, sources in the health department said.
A health department official on Thursday said that new Health Minister Fouzia Lari has already been briefed about the recruitment process that was launched in two phases before the appointment of the caretaker regime and she herself has been expressing concern over the shortage of medical staff in government hospitals.
“We have been processing the appointment affairs under the recruitment criteria of the department approved by the competent authority. But now there is a pause as the nod of the new health minister is awaited for the completion of the recruitments in question”, the official said, adding that the process would be revived as soon as the minister makes up her mind on the issue and accords her permission.
The worst sufferers are patients in rural areas, who have been left dependant on ill-equipped primary level health-care facilities. A number of basic health units, dispensaries and mother and child health centres have almost ceased functioning due to the non-availability of doctors, which could be attributed to the long prevailing ban on recruitment, it has been learnt.
The provincial health department had tested about 26,500 candidates for appointments in two categories: BPS-5 to BPS-11 and BPS-12 to BPS-15 on June 3. The results of the test, which have already been compiled by the health department, are required to be declared officially, following which interviews of qualifying candidates would be held at the district level.
Moreover, written tests of applicants who had applied for jobs against vacancies in the general (grade 17) and specialist cadre (grade 18) of doctors and the nursing cadre (grade 16) in the Sindh health department were held on Nov 4 and the results have also been issued by the test-conducting agency.
Those applicants who have secured 40 per cent or above marks are waiting for the department’s call for the interviews. About 4,000 posts of doctors, specialists, nurses and paramedical staff are lying vacant, said a source in the department.
According to the plan, various committees would be tasked with interviewing the successful candidates at the district level for short-listing of applicants for various posts. The successful candidates would be given a three-year contractual assignment, the source added.
Interviews of candidates having passed the written test can be conducted in a maximum of three weeks’ time, following which the health minister will forward the list of doctors selected for grades 17 and 18 jobs to the chief minister as a procedural requirement, observed another official of the department.
