ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) asked the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat on Wednesday to help get the staff of its Cardiac Centre regularised.

National Health Services (NHS) Secretary Allah Bakhsh Malik has also pledged that he will submit in writing that the Ministry of NHS wants to retain the doctors of the Cardiac Centre.

Wednesday’s Senate committee meeting was chaired by Senator Talha Mehmood and had a one-point agenda to ascertain why contracted staff hace continued their service after the Cardiac Centre and why their case had been referred to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

The Cardiac Centre project began in 2005 and took 10 years to complete. Its staff was appointed through a PC-I and was being paid, but once the project was completed in 2015 the employees were dismissed.

However, the hospital’s management asked the staff to continue working without their salaries, promising to pay them once they were regularised. The hospital staff could not be regularised because they have become overage and regularising them would require permission from the prime minister, which has not been granted despite numerous efforts.

NHS secretary pledges to submit in writing that ministry wants to retain employees

The matter of the doctors’ regularisation has not been resolved despite being taken up in parliamentary committees and reaching the Islamabad High Court (IHC). In addition, it took the intervention of former chief justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar in 2018 for them to be paid more than 30 months worth of salaries. The employees’ contracts are being extended every six months.

According to the letter submitted by Pims, which is available with Dawn, the hospital has investment time and money in training its staff. Abandoning trained employees at this stage would be a setback to the institute, the letter said, and their services are required for a demanding and sensitive specialty.

“After completion of the project these trained employees needed to be regularised because they were hired and trained to run the Cardiac Centre. Similarly one of those employees Prof Shahid Nawaz Malik, of BPS 20, was regularised by Khursheed Shah committee in 2013. So their cases were sent many times for regularisation but they could not be regularised,” letter said.

In 2018, the Cardiac Centre was about to close as its staff was declared outsiders and cases against them were sent to the FIA, it added.

However, the Supreme Court took suo motu and called Fawad Hasan Fawad, then the principal secretary to the prime minister, who allegedly wanted the centre closed, and told him that if the centre was closed for even a day the person responsible would be taken to task.

Although the centre has continued to function, no serious effort has been made to regularise its doctors.

The committee was also informed that the doctors were told to apply for posts through the Federal Public Service Commission. One cardiac surgeon cleared the test but failed the interview, but there was no cardiac surgeon on the commission’s panel that conducted the interview.

NHS Secretary Dr Malik also spoke in favour of the doctors and said the ministry wanted to retain their services.

Senator Mehmood said he should make the statement part of the minutes, to which Dr Malik replied that he would also submit in writing that the ministry wanted to retain the Cardiac Centre staff.

While the committee was discussing ways to regularise the staff, Senator Javed Abbasi suggested that the upper house pass a resolution supporting the regularisation of doctors who have been working for 15 years.

A Pims doctor who attended the meeting told Dawn that the PTI government has not taken any concrete steps to address the issue.

“I still remember that while PTI was in opposition, leaders such as Asad Umar, Ali Nawaz Awan and others used to raise their voice for the doctors and daily-wage teachers of the federal capital but it is unfortunate that they are doing nothing. The problem can be addressed if the federal cabinet gives approval to regularise the doctors and teachers,” he said.

Licenses for CNG/LNG stations

The chairperson of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) told the committee on Wednesday that the criteria to issue licences to open Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) stations is the same in all the provinces and there is a fixed process for obtaining a licence for CNG stations.

The criteria to convert gas stations into petrol stations include a no-objection certificate and permit from Ogra, she added.

She said that many gas stations had converted into petrol stations after the gas shortage, but this process is monitored by Ogra. The committee was assured that stations that are not complying with conditions will be given time to address them and a report will be provided in three weeks.

She added that petrol stations can only be opened in the province where an oil marketing company has storage.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2019