PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai has said that a summary regarding payment of salaries to the lady health workers (LHWs) is being approved. He said that details of their services and schedule of new expenditures had been sent to the finance department to give basic pay scales to them.
He was chairing a meeting held here on Tuesday regarding the issues being faced by LHWs. The high-ups of health department and representatives of LHWs attended the meeting.
He asked the federal government to pay Rs2.4 billion to the provincial government to pay the arrears and salaries to over 13,000 LHWs in the province. The representatives of LHWs thanked the provincial minister for taking interest in solving their issues.
The minister assured the LHWs that all their genuine demands would be accepted and issues resolved on priority basis, saying that being a vertical programme of federal government it was the responsibility of the centre to provide funds to the provincial government for the salaries of LHWs.
Unfortunately, the province has not been provided even a single penny by the centre so far, he said. He claimed that the provincial government had taken up the issue with the centre to get the required funds.
“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the first province to regularise the services of LHWs and now it is working on giving basic pay scales to them,” he said. Mr Tarakai added that LHWs were the backbone of health department due to which their services had been regularised.
Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2015
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