PESHAWAR, Nov 4: The provincial government has installed party loyalists and sympathisers to the management councils of medical institutions to oversee the NWFP’s four teaching hospitals and medical colleges.

Appointments were made through an official notification SOH 1/3-15-03 issued by the NWFP health department on Oct 30. Several of the newly-appointed doctors include office bearers of the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F — the two key components of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.

One of the nominees — who, according to the notification, have been nominated for a period of three years — happens to be the brother of JI Amir Qazi Hussain Ahmad.

They will be the unofficial members of the council, comprising chief executives, medical superintendents and directors finance of respective institutions.

These council members — with enough authority to make even BPS-20 appointments — have all the administrative and financial powers to run health institutions.

The three-member management council that has been formed for Khyber Medical College, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Khyber College of Dentistry comprises Iqbal Khalil, a former Peshawar district Amir of the JI and the present Naib Nazim of Peshawar City District Government, Prof (Retd) Najibul Haq and Fazlur Rehman Madni, an office bearer of Jamiat Ahle Hadith.

The management council set up for Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar includes Prof (Retd) Dr Waheed Ahmad Sahibzada, Hakeem Abdul Waheed, NWFP Naib Amir of the JI, and Shamsur Rehman Shamsi, provincial secretary information of Jamiat Ulema-i- Islami.

The council set up for Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar, constitutes Abdul Aziz Khan Niazi, chancellor of the Qurtaba University, Dr Atiqur Rehman, a retired radiologist, who is the brother of JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Baseer Shah, a former district office bearer of JUI-F.

Dr Asghar Ali Shah, orthopaedic surgeon, Prof Shamim Anwar, Prof of Medicine of the Ayub Medical College, and Qari Mehboobur Rehman, a former secretary information of the JUI-F have been appointed as unofficial members of the management council for Ayub Medical College and Ayub Medical Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad.

“This is blatant cronyism and something that will negatively affect the performance of the teaching hospitals and medical colleges,” said one of doctors at one of the Peshawar’s main teaching hospitals. He said that after having gone through the turmoil of successive PPP and PML-N tenures, he could say things were not as bad as they were now. “They are institutionalising political influence,” the doctor, who is at the helm of the affairs of teaching hospital, said.

Secretary health, NWFP, Ehsanul Haq acknowledged political appointments but defended the decision saying it was taken with ‘sincerity of purpose.’ “It has been done in good faith. If these people play politics then it is going to be bad”, Ehsan said.

“Having political affiliation is not a crime”, he said. “Finding people completely apolitical is not possible. These people are from the civil society.”

He admitted that while there were political appointees and others with known political affiliation and sympathies, still there were some among the councils’ members who in his word were apolitical. “These are clean people with no vested interest”, he said.

The secretary also defended the appointment of brother of Qazi Hussain Ahmad to the council, saying the decision to appoint him was made on account of his own standing as a radiologist rather than his relation with the JI leader.