PESHAWAR: Around 1,500 doctors working on administrative positions in the health department have been waiting promotion for two years due to the department’s failure to send a mandatory working paper to the relevant authorities for approval.

Sources told Dawn that the provincial selection board’s meeting scheduled to take place on April 20 with the chief secretary in the chair would take up the upgradation of the posts in question along with those from other departments.

They said the health department was required to prepare a working paper for the meeting to facilitate the upgradation of posts of the general, management and specialist cadre posts under the three and four tiers formula approved by the ANP government in 2012.

Sources say dept’s failure to prepare working paper for the purpose is to blame

The sources said the finance department had issued a notification for the purpose the same year and even it was reflected in the budget book showing necessary allocations, but the doctors have so far not benefitted from the promotion formula.

The PTI government, which came into being after the elections, didn’t implement the formula afterward to the misery of such doctors.

The sources said under the formula, 147 posts of BPS-20, 730 of BPS-19, 1,354 of BPS-18 and 2,233 of BPS-17 in the health department needed to be filled by the existing staff members from 2017 to 2018.

They said the doctors working on administrative posts hadn’t got promotions like the officials of other government departments.

The sources said around 1,490 doctors working in BPS-17, 18 and 19 would get promotion only if the health department pursued the matter in the PSB meeting.

They said most of the 130 BPS-19 doctors were going to retire in one or two years and if they didn’t get post upgradation, they would lose the due post-retirement benefits.

The sources said the submission of the working paper by March 31 was required to ensure that the doctors working on administrative positions such as district officers, medical superintendents of public sector hospitals, directors, and deputy directors in different sections of the health department, get higher positions.

They said such doctors included 800 to be promoted from BPS-17 to BPS-18.

The sources said the matter was facing delay in action due to a small amount of less than Rs25,000 required for printing out the doctors’ records and preparation of the working paper to be placed before the PSB meeting.

They said a ‘tussle’ at the office of the directorate general (health) was likely to delay the sending of the records to the relevant authorities.

The sources said the promotions in question had been overdue for two years and that the doctors had already submitted their updated annual conferential reports to the health department.

They said the human resource section in the DG (health) office wasn’t getting the desired support from the administration section to prepare the promotion working paper.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2019