CHITRAL: The lady health workers (LHWs) have threatened to boycott the national immunisation days (NIDs) duty if government does not approve service structure and special allowances for them.

Addressing a protest meeting, the leaders of LHWs Association Asia Bibi, Mehr Afroze and Harira said that the nature of their duty was delicate and sensitive as they remained alert round the clock but the government did not pay heed to their demands.

They said that health professional allowance and risk allowance were paid to the nurses and ladies health visitors but they were deprived of it despite the fact that they were the key actors in the immunisation drives.

They demanded pay scales at par with the ladies health visitors and said that it was a pity that LHWs were appointed in BPS-5 and they retired in the same grade.

VARSITY: The University of Chitral was chartered with the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after passage of a bill by the provincial assembly the other day.

An official of the university told Dawn that with passage of the bill, the rumours about legal status of the university would subside as certain quarters were fostering suspicions about its future.

He said that established two years ago, the university merged the local campuses of Abdul Wali Khan University and Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University and started master degree classes both in science and humanities while 4-year BS promgramme was also launched last year.

He claimed that the university earned accomplishments in the field of academics, which included holding international conference on botany and publishing research journals on linguistics and Islamic theology.

The official said that the students of the university made jubilations and distributed sweets when the news of the passage of the bills was aired.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2019