ISLAMABAD: The country’s oft-criticised polio programme is at the centre of a new controversy following a Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) advertisement announcing 21 new posts for an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

The organogram of the proposed EOC has been already declared “a masterpiece of obscurity” by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), which recommended handing over the polio programme to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), a proposal that was rejected outright by Pakistani health authorities.

While Pakistan risks international isolation in the shape of health-based travel curbs, Minister of State for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar claims that appointments to the EOC are necessary and the country will escape curbs by performing better in the future.

But an NHS Ministry official told Dawn said that this refusal to implement IMB recommendations would not be ignored at the international level.

“In May 2014, IMB recommended that the EOC should be established and all stakeholders should sit under one roof. But in their latest report, Pakistan’s EOC has been rejected as being overly bureaucratic. Instead of implementing IMB recommendations, the ministry has decided to appoint as many as 21 people to man positions in this ineffective EOC. This is mindboggling, especially since staff with adequate qualifications were already available,” he said.

According to the advertisement published recently, the EOC’s director and emergency coordinator will both be paid Rs300,000 each, while the directors for High-Risk Population and Communications will receive Rs200,000 each.

He said the advertisement was bound to come as a huge surprise for donor agencies, because everyone knew that the polio programme was already over-staffed and at least 200,000 persons are directly or indirectly associated with the programme.

But Ms Tarar insisted that the 21 vacancies were created under the PC-1 that was submitted to the Islamic Development Bank, which afforded a loan to fund the setting up of the EOC.

Asked whether she was afraid that the country could be further isolated if international recommendations were not adhered to, she said that her ministry was doing its best to perform under the circumstances and if they managed to controls new cases of polio, both the IMB and international community would be satisfied.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2014