PESHWAR: The civil servants affiliated with health department including doctors, paramedics, nurses and other staffers, who are posted out from medical teaching institutions, are facing delay in getting salaries from the department, according to sources.

They said that medical teaching institutions were transferring the civil servants to health department, where they were waiting to get salaries from the provincial government.

The provincial government has extended Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 to 10 hospitals and their affiliated medical colleges to grant them financial and administrative autonomy.

The MTI-covered institutions have started repatriating the civil servants to health department as they had not opted for joining their institutions.

Official says process underway for release of salary

Syed Roidar Shah, president of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Paramedical Association, said that of the total 20,000 paramedics in the province, 1,600 had been working in medical teaching institutions for the last several years.

“After the implementation of MTIRA 2015, the government is transferring them to their native districts without any reason. We demand that anyone involved in moral or financial issues should be transferred but those performing their duty shouldn’t be displaced,” he added.

The doctors and nurses are also faced with the same situation.

“Our colleagues are repatriated to health department from where they were sent to the far flung areas. They are yet to get salaries,” an office-bearer of Provincial Doctors Association said.

A medical director at a Peshawar-based medical teaching institution said that according to MTIRA 2015, the Board of Governor was authorised to abolish posts, create new ones or designate the existing positions as per requirement.

He said that there was no need to retain the civil employees because they were recruited by the provincial government.

The medical teaching institutions, he said, had no authority to take action against them as they can be treated under Civil Servants Act 1973.

Prof Nausherwan Barki, chairman of Policy Board for MTIs, told Dawn that the civil servants had been appointed by the health department while the medical teaching institutions had its own staffers.

“The services of the civil servants are needed in the provincial hospitals due to which they are being transferred. The MTIs have its own rules for its members,” he said.

A senior official of health department said that they were in the process to start paying salaries to the civil servants repatriated by MTIs.

“It takes time to create a budget code for such positions. All employees would get salaries,” he added.

Health Secretary Syed Imtiaz Hussain told Dawn that he would check the matter.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2021