PESHAWAR: Restoration of positions of additional director-general health services (ADGHS) has led to streamlining the affairs of the sprawling health department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, acoording to sources.

The four positions of additional ADGHS were abolished in September which created a lot of problems as it was difficult to run the affairs of the department in their absence.

The director-general health services is required to attend high-level meetings held under the chief minister, health minister and health secretary in addition to travelling to Islamabad for important parleys with federal level health programmes as well as keeping liaison with the international donor agencies.

The top position is meant to implement the government’s policies due to which its occupant remained too busy to look into other matters relating to the employees, procurements, public health and others issues emerging from time to time. The four positions of ADGHS were abolished in September last year due to which there were lot of issues prompting the health department to restore the posts and cope with the affairs effectively, according to sources.

Posts of additional director-general health services were abolished last year

They said that the four ADGH, one each for human resource management, administration, monitoring and evaluation and services worked under the DGHS due to which the latter found time to focus on the main issues. They said that the department had more than 70,000 employees in more than 2,600 health facilities in the province so it was not possible for one DGHS to tackle all the issues efficiently.

Sources said that health was the second largest department after elementary and secondary education with dozens of different cadres having different issues. They said that there were 14 categories only in paramedics in addition to IT section, nursing and doctors, specialist doctors, ad hoc doctors, dentists, district health officers, medical superintendents, requiring different officers at the top level to streamline their affairs.

They said that the importance of the positions was realised by the health minister and health secretary so the posts were restored in June. Four doctors of management cadre in BPS-20 were appointed against the posts. Now one ADGHS looks into the affairs relating to the service matters of the employees and his three colleagues focus on other areas under the direct supervision of the DGHS.

“DGHS, the top implementing officer of the health matters in the province, is still the highest authority but work has been streamlined as the four ADGH perform their assigned duties and send the same for approval to the former,” said sources.

After the abolition of these four positions, the employees of health department faced problems in connection with their service matters whereas different sections of the department also encountered issues, which hampered their progress in various areas.

Sources said that the DGHS remained preoccupied with top level meetings, attended courts when summoned by the judges in connection with matter relating to the health-related programmes, employees and epidemics, so the restoration of those positions were desperately needed to enable him to concentrate on high level matters.

Any of the four ADGHS can participate in meetings and inquiries because they were senior officers and most often the government orders that officers not less than BPS-20 of health department should attend meetings. After merger of health facilities of the erstwhile Fata, the ADGHS played important roles to look into the affairs in the far flung areas, they said.

The reduction in workload enabled the DGHS to focus on overall monitoring of the health situation in the province and issue orders from the government and secretariat to the ADGHS. The DGHS still performs all the work but after receiving complete files from the relevant ADGHS.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2022