November 10, 2008	Monday	Ziqa'ad 11, 1429

KARACHI, Nov 9: A multimillion-rupee project for computerization of records at the civil hospital, which was cancelled about six months ago for showing little progress, is likely to be revived soon as the information technology and health ministers have agreed to request the chief minister for inclusion of the scheme in the annual development programme, it has been reliably learnt.

Sources said the hospital management and information system project approved by the provincial working development party in October 2005 could not be timely executed mainly due to bureaucratic snags. It also remained included in the annual development programmes of the financial year 2007-08 and the delay pushed up its original cost of Rs93.127 million by 47 per cent, according to the last year’s estimates.

However, things could not move in the right direction and finally the project faced a big blow in May this year when the provincial government decided to abandon all those schemes which showed no progress during the last financial year.

The sources said the project’s revival came under discussion at a meeting of the ministers and secretaries of health and information technology departments on Saturday. They were briefed on the project by a director in the information technology department, Mohammad Yousuf.

Following the briefing, Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmad and Information Technology Minister Mohammad Raza Haroon observed that the project was vital for better management and efficient use of available resources both human and financial at the hospital. The ministers agreed to request Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah to order for the project’s inclusion in the present annual development programme and for the release of the Rs137million allocation en bloc in the current financial year, said a senior official who attended the meeting.

A source privy to the hospital management and information system project said that officials were confident in December last that work would finally begin in March 2008. But the hierarchies in the provincial information technology, health and finance departments on occasions seemed to be dragging their feet on the project, the source noted.

An administrative approval to the hospital management and information system and expenditure sanction from the finance department were accorded in March 2008 following which there was very little time left to complete other formalities and execute the project during the last fiscal year. It was then decided in a joint meeting of the IT department and the Civil Hospital Karachi high-ups that work on the project would kick off in 2008-09. Physical and financial progress remained slow primarily because the administrative approval from the finance department was received very late, claimed an official during the recent ministers’ meeting.

Mr Haroon said the information technology department was also in a position to re-appropriate some of its available funds for the initiation of the project during the current financial year, if the necessary permissions were accorded by the chief minister.

Despite repeated administrative changes at different levels over the two years before the general elections, the department’s hierarchy remained divided into two groups — the accountability-conscious and the politically-motivated — who failed to develop a consensus on some of the main issues, according to a source.

Insiders said the health department as well as the hospital failed to play any proactive role perhaps because some of the staffers concerned feared transparency that was to prevail after computerization of the records of salaries, leaves, postings, transfers and attendance of employees, the record of medicine supply as well as administrative issues.

Consultancy of the scheme has already been carried out by a firm on a gratis basis. Besides, four companies had furnished bids ranging from Rs100 million to Rs110 million in response to a tender floated in 2006. The IT department, in the meantime, received Rs71 million funds in its kitty for the procurement of hardware and software, which were surrendered to the government at a later stage.

According to a recently issued government handout, the implementation of management and information system in the civil hospital would be ensured so that patients could be offered better health services. The system may also be introduced in other hospitals and healthcare centres of the province.