ISLAMABAD: Highlighting the efforts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in the field of health, education and policing, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has asked Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar to compare the performance of KP with other three provinces.

“I want independent assessment by the chief justice about significant change in the field of health and education in KP,” Mr Khan said at a press conference here on Monday.

“I do not claim that my government has turned KP into another Switzerland, but we have brought a significant change in health and education sectors,” he added.

Accompanied by Prof Dr Nausherwan Burki, chairman of the Lady Reading Hospital, and KP Health Minister Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, the PTI chief said he had given a task to Dr Burki to make reforms in the health sector by utilising his experience of working in developed states.

Says PTI-led government increased health budget from Rs30bn to Rs80bn in five years

CJP Nisar recently visited different places in Peshawar and expressed dissatisfaction over the performance of the KP government.

Mr Khan criticised the federal and Punjab governments for constructing highways and bridges and said: “A country does not progress because of highways and bridges but because of human development.”

He said the federal and Punjab governments had spent over Rs40 billion on advertisements only for self-projection of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. “They have spent Rs40bn on ads while we have built Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital in Peshawar only at a cost of Rs4bn,” he claimed.

Under the KP government’s flagship programme, he said, 69 per cent families in the province had been issued health cards to provide each family a lifetime health coverage of Rs500,000.

“By next year, 100 per cent families will be provided health coverage.”

Mr Khan said the PTI-led KP government had changed the management of major healthcare facilities as a first step and a lot of work was yet to be done for the improvement of the health sector and elimination of “mafia” from there.

He highlighted some resistance the KP government was facing while bringing change to the health sector and said the doctors who had been stopped from doing private practices were against any change and moving courts.

Mr Khan said the KP government had increased its health budget from Rs30bn to Rs80bn over the past five years, claiming that 30 doctors who had left for United States for jobs returned to Lady Reading Hospital because of improved working conditions in the province.

The KP health minister claimed that the provincial government had established 15 new hospitals and construction of another 12 would be completed by the next month.

He said that over Rs12bn had been spent on equipping all KP hospitals with latest machines and instruments, claiming that the number of doctors in the province had increased from 2,500 to 9,000.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2018