PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is seeking extension of its health-related laws to the Malakand division which is governed as Provincially Administered Tribal Area by the federal government, according to sources.

They said that legal issues had been hampering the government’s plan to extend jurisdiction of the provincial law to Malakand division and regulate the health-related affairs there.

They said that besides other laws The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Transfusion of Safe Blood Act 1999, Food Safety Authority Act 2014, Medical Transplantation Regulatory Authority Act 2014, Protection of Breast Feeding and Child Nutrition Act 2015, Injured Persons and Emergency (Medical Aid) Act 2014, Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act 2015 and Health Care Commission Act 2015 had not been extended to Malaknd division.

Health department urges CS to take up the matter with centre

The sources said that KP was required to provincialise all the federal laws after the passage of 18th amendment by the National Assembly for which it initiated a process by communicating to the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (Safron) several times. However, it couldn’t succeed and the situation with regard to regulating health affairs in seven districts of Malakand could not change for the better.

None of the provincial laws has been extended to Pata since 1999 and the residents are yet to reap benefit of the legislation enforced for regulating health sector in other districts of the province. For the past two years, there has been a series of communication between the Law and Justice Division of Safron and the Home and KP Tribal Affairs Department, but without any result.

The health department has no role to check irregularities and regulate sale of medicines in the Swat, Buner, Chitral, Shangla, Upper Dir and Lower Dir districts despite KP’s requests to the federal government that the population was not benefiting from the laws it had passed, the sources said.

Despite having full-fledged administrative setup in Malakand, with district health officers in all its districts, non-extension of laws has been the main hindrance to check malpractices in the health sector. All the health-related laws have been passed by the provincial assembly which has representation of Malaknd division.

The KP government has been asking the federal government to allow extension of its laws to ensure provision of quality medicines, investigation and treatment facilities to the people. In this regard, the health department also gave a presentation to the KP chief secretary recently with a request to take up the issue with the federal government and empower it to extend its law to Malakand.

Sources said that the chief secretary would take up the matter with the federal government through proper channel. They said that the health department would submit to the chief secretary details of the laws already sent to the federal government and the progress so far.

The sources said that the law department would give its opinion on how to proceed to enforce the provincial laws in Pata and benefit a sizable population. They claimed that the process had been started in Sept 2015 by the Chief Minister’s Office, but the ministry of Safron was raising the same observations repeatedly though these had been answered.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2017