PESHAWAR: Jamaat-i-Islami provincial chief Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan on Friday rejected the proposed changes to the healthcare system saying the government has ignored the doctors’ demands.

He told reporters at the Peshawar Press Club that the party would raise the issue in the provincial assembly and create public awareness against the government’s plan in that respect.

Mr Mushtaq said the Jamaat rejected the proposed formation of the district and regional health authorities as it was an attempt to privatise public sector hospitals.

Party’s provincial chief says govt trying to centralise powers

He said the government’s policy on medical teaching institutions had endangered the future of their students.

“Hasty decisions will destroy the public-interest institutions,” he said.

The JI leader rejected amendments to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act and said his party sided with nazims in their fight for the protection of the LG system.

Accompanied by MPA Inayatullah Khan and JI leader Jamaat Ali Shah, Mr Mushtaq said the government had failed to fulfil its prime responsibilities and therefore, it was fast losing the people’s support.

He said the government was bound by the law to improve health and educational facilities but it wasn’t bothered about that to the misery of the people.

The JI leader said the MTI law was an attempt to hand over hospitals to influential political people denying poor patients the inexpensive yet quality medical treatment.

“By approving the proposed bodies like district and regional health authorities, the government will successfully complete the hospitals’ privatisation and that, too, without taking stakeholders into confidence,” he said.

The JI leader said senor doctors of public sector hospitals were quitting jobs due to the government’s wrong policies.

He complained that public sector hospitals either lacked equipment or had faulty machines. “The government should stop targeting qualified doctors and paramedics in the name of health reforms otherwise things will be complicated,” he said.

Mr Mushtaq said all organisations of doctors were opposed to the proposed health bodies.

He said the provincial government was managing the health department ‘from the US by remote control’ but such a thing won’t succeed.

The JI leader urged the government to withdraw the proposal of forming district and regional health authorities and avoid mass transfer of doctors and said the health minister shouldn’t threaten doctors.

He said the government had repeatedly claimed to have devolved powers to the grassroots level but the proposed amendments to the LG law exposed its designs to centralise powers in its hands.

Mr Mushtaq said if irrational decisions about health and local government systems were not withdrawn immediately, then his party would announce a campaign in support of doctors and elected members of the local bodies across the province.

Former minister Inayatullah Khan declared the government’s health and local government policies a total failure and said the JI would take them up in assemblies and Senate besides challenging them in the court of law.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2019