LAHORE: President Mamnoon Husain has appointed Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif as chairman of the Board of Trustees of Shaikh Zayed Hospital (SZH), Lahore.

Members of the board have also been notified by the Cabinet Division, Islamabad, on behalf of the president. Two of the members have been nominated by the UAE government.

The Board of Trustees of SZH was made functional after the gap of a decade or so, an official privy to the development told Dawn on Thursday.

He said a major representation in the restructured board was made by the government while the chief secretary, secretaries of law, health and finance departments were also made its members.

The formation of the board has brought to an end the debate whether it is under the administrative control of Punjab government or the federal government since it was handed over to the provincial government under the 18th Amendment.

The board has been reconstituted amid months-long protests and strong reservations of SZH employees.

They have been claiming that the status of the ‘Trust Hospital would lead to unemployment of good number of regular employees. They termed it an attempt to privatise the government institute.

They also claimed that many post-retirement financial benefits would be withdrawn if the Board of Trustees was restructured.

While the institute has been facing financial crisis since the dysfunctional of its Board of Governors (BoG). According to the laid down procedure, the Board of Trustees was to form the BoG, the official said.

However, in the absence of the BoG, an interim body was constituted by the Punjab government under the chairmanship of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. The committee was assigned the task of looking after financial, academic and administrative issues of the institute since its administrative control was handed over to the Punjab government in 2012 along with its other components, including Shaikh Khalifa Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Medical and Dental College, Shaikh Zayed Postgraduate Medical Institute and Shaikh Fatima Institute of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Meanwhile, the institute suffered a major dent in the form of drastic annual budget cut which was reduced from Rs480 million to Rs220 million.

The budget curtailment adversely affected financial, administrative, academic and even service care matters.Unfortunately, the official said, the committee could not meet due to hectic schedule of Mr Dar in other official matters which resulted into an acute shortage of funds, particularly the life-saving medicines, at the SZH.

The repair and maintenance of the highly sophisticated equipment and procurement of new ones was also said to be one of the major problems of the institute.

He said the formation of the new Board of Trustees and visible nomination of the Punjab government has dispelled an impression that the institute was being handed back to Islamabad.

SZH Chairman Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal said the constitution of the Board of Trustees would help improve functioning of the state-of-the-art institute which has been suffering financial problems since its absence.

He made it clear that no employee was being fired in the wake of formation of the Board of Trustees. “The Board will rather provide them job security and improve their service conditions”, Dr Zafar said adding that the health authorities have also given assurance in this regard.