PESHAWAR: Adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister on health Prof Abid Jameel has said the caretaker government has no plans to do away with the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015,introduced by its predecessor to grant autonomy to the province’s public sector teaching hospitals as healthcare reforms.

“We don’t intend to promulgate an ordinance to roll back the MTIRA because we’re not mandated to do so,” Prof Abid told Dawn.

The aide to the CM said he had taken up the matter with the chief minister, who ruled out the possibility of the abolition of the MTI law.

He said he had also checked with the chief secretary and health secretary about the matter, but got the assurance that nothing of the sort was in the works.

Prof Abid claims false alarm being raised by vested interests

Prof Abid, a former head of the oncology department at the Hayatabad Medical Complex Peshawar, said a false alarm was being raised by vested interests about the MTI Act to create unrest among health professionals and employees of medical teaching institutions.

He said such rumours should be ignored by stakeholders.

Meanwhile, sources in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat told Dawn that if there’re any plans for the issuance of an ordinance by the governor to abolish the law, it had to happen through the chief secretary and chief minister’s offices.

They said the adviser to the chief minister on health recently met the chief minister and discussed with him the matter in detail.

The MTIRA was enforced by the PTI government in 2015 to grant financial and administrative autonomy to the public sector teaching hospitals in the province and improve patient care.

It was challenged in the high court of law by stakeholders, including representatives of doctors, nurses and paramedics, who considered it to be an attempt to turn their government service into a private one.

However, the court cleared the legislation a year later. Initially, the law was implemented in a few teaching hospitals and their affiliated medical colleges.

However, the number rose to 10 with their affairs being managed by the respective boards of governors.

Before the legislation was made, the medical teaching institutions were run by the health department.

Under the law, the MTI-covered hospitals have their own staff hired on three-year contractual basis, while the civil servants working there were transferred out for future posting.

Most of such doctors and other members of hospital staff argue that the new law led to their displacement from Peshawar-based hospitals, where they had worked dedicatedly for decades.

They said they hoped that the current caretaker government would abolish the law.

Those doctors also insisted that reports were circulating on social media about the imminent issuance of an ordinance to do away with the MTI’s status of the public sector teaching hospitals and return of their control to the health department.

Legal experts insisted that the governor could repeal the MTIRA without assigning any reason as he had the power under the Constitution.

They, however, said the law needed to be tabled in the provincial assembly for permanent abolition.

“An ordinance is effective for a limited period of time. At the moment, the provincial assembly doesn’t exist, so it is only the governor, who can promulgate ordinances and amend or repeal laws,” a lawyer told Dawn.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2023