PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned drastic changes to its much-touted Medical Teaching Institution Act, 2015, including withdrawal of the service protection offered to the employees of autonomous institutions.

A bill in this respect was tabled in the provincial assembly on Dec 12 proposing several amendments to 21 of the 26 clauses of the law.

Officials told Dawn that far-reaching, mostly hidden, impact amendments had been proposed in Section 16, which dealt with service matters.

Bill proposes withdrawal of job protection for staffers of autonomous institutions

They said for the employees of autonomous institutions existing before the introduction of MTIs and whose services were protected in the MTI law, job protection had been waived off, while their terms and conditions would be prescribed anew through regulations.

An official said civil servants working in MTIs, especially the clinical ones including professors, get rough end of the deal.

“The teaching staff originally belonged to the cadre of particular hospitals (now MTIs). Selected by the Public Service Commission, they are part of that cadre. They cannot return to government or any other cadre,” he said.

The official said addition of Section 3B on deputation to MTIs had a provision directly in contradiction to government rules.

“As deputation requests are from borrower and approved by lender and there is no unilateral return or withdrawal. The amendment gives this power to board which is not in accordance with rules,” he said.

The official said sub-section 9 of the proposed law provided for a board of arbitration for decision on grievances of employees, and states its decision to be final.

“This takes out option of judicial review which is right of each citizen,” he said, adding that similarly, sub-section (10) provides for shifting of all court cases to Arbitration Board, which was against the principle of law as how can an act of provincial assembly take back cases already instituted in, and accepted for regular hearing, by high court and Supreme Court.

The official said that through Section 16(A) an alternate judicial system is being established. Sub-Section (2) requires appointment of minimum 10 retired judges with its terms and conditions and finances unknown.

The official said that amendment in clause (b) of Section 4 replaces “government” with “chief minister” as the authority which assigns functions to MTIs and instead of collective wisdom of provincial cabinet, which is government, authority goes into the hands of single individual.

The official also pointed out that in section 8(2) world governments has been substituted with minister Health and thus judging performance of the BOGs becomes an in-house exercise where collective wisdom of the cabinet is replaced with minister health as an individual.

Also amendment in sub section (1) of section 8 takes away the power of appointment of search and nomination council (the all-powerful body recommending appointments to BOGs) from cabinet’s collective wisdom to individual decisions of chief minister.

When approached, health secretary Dr Syed Farooq Jamil said speculations regarding the proposed MTI amendments were misleading.

He said as per the existing provisions of the MTI Act, 2015, the doctors not opting for institution-based practice will not be eligible for any incentives or bonus. The same provisions are not amended at all therefore the same rules will continue in future as well.

The secretary said after the amendments were made, terms and conditions of institutional employees would be changed but it would be as beneficial as the present terms and conditions and rather the financial benefits would be better than what they got currently.

He said members of the proposed board of arbitration would be taken from among the retired judges of Supreme Court and high court, or Supreme Court lawyers having 25 years of experience of practice.

“No Member of the board of governors could become member of the proposed board of arbitration,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2018