PESHAWAR: The general cadre doctors, whose promotion is due to next grades, are destined to miss the chances of getting promotion to next grade owing to the inability of health department to prepare a case for the meeting of the provincial selection board (PSB) to be held in August.

According to sources, a tussle among the doctors at the office of director-general (DG) health services has put at stake the promotion of general cadre doctors as the finance department is awaiting the working paper to take up the cases in the meeting of PSB.

“Dr Rizwan, the deputy director human resource management (HRM), who was transferred from DG office to Nowshera in May this year, has illegally kept the whole file of promotion cases with himself and is not giving it to anyone to process it through secretary health and send it to finance department for the PSB’s meeting,” they said.

Board meeting to be held in August but health dept has not sent working paper to finance dept

Sources said that DG health had given additional charge of HRM to another doctor but he was unable to do anything because the record was in the possession of Dr Rizwan.

They said that without the preparation of case by DG health office, the finance department could not issue notification regarding the availability of positions.

As per procedure, the health department will send a working paper to finance department after which the latter would issue a notification according to which the former would send cases for promotions for approval of the PSB’s meeting to be held under chief secretary.

Sources told this scribe that the four-tier formula approved in August 2018 for promotion of doctors was yet to be implemented. Owing to the delay, doctors have been waiting for their promotions for the last two decades.

“The health department has been given a budget book with code by a doctors committee in February 2019 but the department is not able to prepare a case according to the formula under which the promotion of doctors is long overdue,” said sources.

According to the formula, 675 doctors should be promoted from BPS-17 to BPS-18, 658 from BPS-18 to BPS-19 and 74 from BPS-19 to BPS-20.

Unlike other line departments, where officers get regular promotion, the doctors missed chances of promotion in the PSB’s meeting held in August 2018, December 2018 and February 2019 whereas in April 2019 only 240 doctors were promoted to BPS-19 against 600 vacant positions.

The four-tier formula was approved in 2012 but it remained in limbo till its first phase was partly implemented in 2017 by the virtue of which more than 300 doctors were promoted. A notification regarding the second phase of the formula was issued in August 2018 and its final notification remains pending due to tussle among doctors at the DG health office.

Sources said that 730 doctors in BPS-19 were needed but only 240 of them were promoted in May 2019 while the remaining 490 posts in the same grade were lying vacant that needed to be filled in the PSB’s August meeting.

“If the notification is not issued immediately then the whole budget allocated for promotion will remain unspent and go back to government’s kitty to deprive doctors of their due promotion,” they said.

Health Secretary Dr Syed Farooq Jamil told Dawn that all the doctors, whose promotion was due, would be promoted. He added that there was no problem and all deserving doctors would get promotion.

“We will definitely send the working paper because we want to improve patients’ care which is possible only when our health workers are satisfied,” said the health secretary.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2019