KARACHI: The provincial metropolis has been facing a shortage of female medico-legal officers as only three women MLOs are working in designated city hospitals.

Women victims and their attendants had to wait for several days at three major public hospitals — the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) — due to shortage of female MLOs.

Police Surgeon Dr Qarar Abbasi said: “Only three women MLOs are available in major hospitals out of which one is on leave while only two are working.”

He said that there were nine sanctioned posts of lady MLOs in Karachi and six of them were lying vacant for the past several months.

The acute shortage of female MLOs has increased the burden of work on male MLOs in the major public hospitals and in case of any emergency existing male and female MLOs have to work extra hours beyond their duty hours.

There is an urgent need of female MLOs to handle the emergency cases and also to minimise the extra burden on male MLOs.

The report of an MLO contains the cause of death, time of death, nature of death as well as wounds and other details.

The number of posts of lady MLOs has not been increased for decades despite the fact that the crime ratio has increased manifold.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2019