HYDERABAD, June 14: The out-patient department (OPD) of the Liaquat University Hospital, serving as the Hyderabad civil hospital, did not open on Friday although it had resumed functioning late on Thursday evening after a day-long closure of several sections enforced by a group of employees agitating against an armed attack on one of their colleagues in the morning.

The All Sindh Peoples Paramedical Staff Welfare Association enforced the closure in protest against the attack on a dispenser, Zulfiqar Jatoi, who is also an office-bearer of the association and head of the medicines procurement section.

Mr Jatoi had sustained bullet wounds in the attack by four armed men while he was on way to his workplace. He is undergoing treatment at the ICU of the hospital. He alleged that the attack was carried out at the behest of the hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr Kazim Raza Shah, to force him to stop a campaign against him and his associates involved in massive corruption.

Dr Shah said that the campaigners themselves were actually culprits in the medicine procurement scam.

A large number of patients coming from various areas of Hyderabad and the interior of Sindh had to suffer on account of the OPD closure.

All other LHU sections and departments including the operating theatres remained unaffected by the strike call.

Meanwhile, members of the association staged a sit-in outside the office of the hospital’s medical superintendent and administration block for two hours (9am to 11pm). They shouted slogans against the MS and demanded his removal and arrest.

The protest was led by divisional president of the association Aijaz Maulai and some other office-bearers. They vowed to continue the two-hour sit-in and protest demonstrations daily until the MS was arrested.

Members of the association and other supporters of Mr Jatoi on Thursday staged noisy demonstrations on the premises of the hospital to condemned the attack.

They also ransacked the offices of the MS and his three assistants in the administration block to vent their anger over the attack on Mr Jatoi.