HARIPUR/PARACHINAR: The doctors, paramedics and other staff of the District Headquarters Teaching Hospital, Haripur, continued boycott of work on the second consecutive day on Saturday to protest delay in payment of allowance from the capitation fee that the hospital received from a private medical college for offering teaching services to its students.

The hospital staff claimed that its management had signed an MoU with the International Medical College, Abbottabad, a few years ago under which the college paid at least Rs16 million a year to the hospital in line with public-private partnership.

They said that under a formula devised to acknowledge the services of doctors and other staff, the hospital had to pay 10 per cent allowance to each of its employee on their basic pay scale.

They said that the hospital management had not paid the allowance to the staff for the last 11 months.

When contacted, medical superintendent of the hospital Dr Saifullah Khalid said that things had been settled and doctors and other staff had resumed their duties after a token protest.

Over 500 doctors, nurses and other employees work in the hospital.

In Parachinar, lady health workers and supervisors staged a protest demonstration outside the office of agency surgeon against non-payment of their pending arrears and salaries since July 2017 and threatened to boycott the upcoming polio campaign.

The protesters said that the services of lady health workers were regularised in 2017, but the Fata Secretariat had not announced service structure for them.

They said that they had been performing duties in immunisation campaigns without getting any additional benefits.

They demanded of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor and Fata health directorate to look into the matter and order release of their salaries and arrears.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2018