PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday extended the stay order stopping the board of governors of the Lady Reading Hospital from finalising the appointment of consultants to the hospital.

A bench consisting of Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Roohul Amin Khan directed the lawyer for the BoG to produce a written statement stating that these appointments will not affect the seniority of the doctors.

It also directed lawyer Shakil Ahmad to produce the sanctioned number of posts to be filled.

The bench was hearing a writ petition filed by PGMI (Post Graduate Medical Institute) Teachers Association, Dr Musa Kaleem, who claims that the BoG had published an advertisement for appointment of consultants against posts of professors, associate professors and assistant professors in different specialty.

The bench also directed the administration of LRH not to take any adverse action against the petitioner, who had feared that he would be victimized because of challenging these appointments in the court.

The petitioner has challenged the said advertisement published by the BoG in different newspapers and some foreign medical journals named The Lancet and British Medical Journal (BMJ) in Jan 2016 for filling unspecified number of posts of professors, associate professors and assistant professors.

The petitioner feared that with these fresh appointments their seniority would be affected.

During previous hearing the court had directed the respondents including LRH’s BoG to continue with the process of recruitment but not to announce the final appointments.

Advocate Shakeel Ahmad contended that with these appointments the services of the petitioner would not be affected.

He stated that appointments would be made against post of consultants and not that of professors, associate and assistant professors.

The petitioner’s counsel Mian Muhibullah Kakakhel contended that if these posts were not of professors etc. then why they had mentioned it in the advertisement.

He added that if these appointments would not be against posts of professors, etc then they would not be having any objection over it provided that the BoG gave written assurance in this regard.

The respondents in the petition are the KP government through chief secretary, secretary health, BoG, Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) and director human resource of LRH.

The petitioner has stated that impugned advertisement was vague in which neither the qualification required for these posts was mentioned nor it was given which area domicile the candidate should possesses. He stated that even the number of posts was not specified in it.

He stated that the appearance of the advertisement amounted to ignoring the serving officials and these posts had to be filled through promotion instead of fresh appointment.

He added that the advertisement was against the PMDC rules. He stated that the advertisement was

Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2016