LAHORE, Aug 29: The government is immediately recruiting 2,400 doctors in a bid to provide better health facilities in the province, Punjab health minister Tahir Khalil Sindhu said responding to various written queries in the Punjab Assembly here on Thursday.

He said in this connection the doctors’ interviews had been completed and that the new appointees would not be transferred for three years from the place of their first posting.

The minister also told the house that a comprehensive plan had been formulated for eliminating bogus medicines’ business as activities of drug inspectors would be monitored through a software developed by the Information Technology Board.

He said vacancies of drug inspectors were also being filled. He denied claims of some opposition members that free medicines were not being provided in state-run hospitals.

Opposition leader Mian Mahmoodur Rashid, on a point of order, suggested Speaker Rana Muhammad Iqbal to form a committee for bringing leader of the house (chief minister) Shahbaz Sharif in the assembly as the chief minister did not appear even once (in the house) during 13 sittings of the ongoing session. He added the house should adopt a resolution to the effect.

The speaker responded in a light vein that being an old friend of Mr Sharif, the opposition leader himself should do the job.

LAW-MAKING: The house passed both the Punjab Police Order (Amendment) Bill 2013 and Nawaz Sharif University of Agriculture Multan Bill 2013 with majority vote, rejecting all amendments by the opposition.

The opposition comprising PTI, PPP, PML-Q and JI, had submitted five amendments to the Police Order and 18 to the Agriculture University bill. It refused to withdraw any of the amendments.

The opposition termed the establishment of university a positive step, but it demanded it should be named after a ‘national hero’.

Law Minister Rana Sanaullah insisted Nawaz Sharif too was a national hero since under whose second tenure as prime minister the country became a nuclear power.

The house also took up nine adjournment motions about education, health, housing, employment, environment and inflation while a call-attention notice about the killing of a guard by dacoits at a police station in Faisalabad was also raised.