KARACHI, March 9: The National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) is facing a serious financial crisis, as the government has not yet released its quarterly grant, it emerged on Saturday.

A press release said that the NICVD received grant-in-aid from the government as financial assistance, which was only sufficient to pay salaries of 1,000 employees.

It said that the grant, which was provided by the federal government till June 2011 and later by the Sindh government on a quarterly basis, had not yet been released and the institute had been paying employees salaries for the past two months from its own sources.

The financial crisis had aggravated because there had not been any increase in the government financial assistance since 2010, though salaries had been revised thrice during this time, it added.

“It is important that the third and fourth quarterly grants are released immediately and additional financial assistance is provided to accommodate the raise in salaries over the past three years,” said the press release.

The NICVD administration also requested the Sindh governor and the chief minister to intervene in the matter.