PESHAWAR: Five Covid-19 patients died and 93 more infections were detected in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday amid a threat by contract doctors to stop duties in the Covid wards and vaccination centres against non-regularisation of their services.

“Majority of our colleagues is engaged in management of Covid-19 patients in hospitals. Two of the contract doctors have died of the virus and over 100 others and their family members have been infected. We demand regularisation of our services also because many of us are going to get overage,” Dr Naveed Farooq Wazir, General Secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ad hoc Medical Officers Association, told Dawn.

He said the government had appointed 1,122 doctors on contract for six months in April 2020. About 1,500 doctors had applied for the jobs in the hope that their services would be ultimately regularised because there were instances when doctors appointed on ad hoc basis had been made permanent. He said interviews of these doctors were conducted by a panel of professionals.

After completion of the first six-month tenure, the contract of 965 doctors was extended and the rest were shown the door for poor performance. Since then, their services have been extended twice and the third extension is expected soon.

“With each extension, the doctors have to wait for four months to get salaries. Now, our salaries have been stopped on Oct 13 despite positive reports of the concerned district health officers,” Dr Wazir said.

“We called off strikes in September this year after an assurance by a delegation of the government and opposition parties regarding regularisation of our jobs, but we are still waiting for confirmation of our services,” he said.

He said lack of job security was a matter of concern because most of them belonged to middle class families and were near to attain the age of 35 years after which they won’t be able to apply for government jobs.

The association’s general secretary asked health minister Taimur Jhagra to start the process for regularisation of their services otherwise they would be left with no option, but to go on strike. He said many of these doctors held postgraduate degrees and were eligible to work in any hospital.

Meanwhile, a report by the health department said that four persons breathed their last due to Covid-19 in Peshawar and one in Swat district. The province’s tally of fatalities reached 5,727 and incidence 177,346. Of the confirmed patients, 169,466 (94 per cent), including 188 in last 24 hours, have recovered. A total of 8,855 suspected patients have been tested, it said.

There are 2,453 active coronavirus cases in the province, it said. Except Peshawar’s two per cent positivity, all the high-risk districts have below one per cent infectivity rate. It said 370 patients were in hospitals, which included 28 on ventilators, while 2,150 were in quarantine.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2021