PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has expressed displeasure over the “poor” performance of heads of several public sector hospitals, district health offices, public health programmes and the health services academy in the province and warned them of disciplinary action over failure to mend their ways.

They include medical superintendents of 24 district headquarters hospitals and tehsil headquarters hospitals, 10 district health officers, two project directors, and the director-general of the health services academy, according to a letter issued by health secretary Mahmood Aslam Wazir to them.

The secretary directed them all to ensure effective resolution of the health issues facing people.

Sources at the health secretariat told Dawn that those officers were formally told in the past as well to address the complaints lodged by people about poor healthcare with the provincial Management Reforms Unit at the offices of the chief secretary, but compliance with those instructions wasn’t up to the mark. They said the chief secretary conveyed his displeasure over the matter to the health secretary and directed him to look into it.

Secretary formally asks them all to mend ways

The sources said the performance of the officers in question was found to be “below 50 per cent.”

In the letter, the health secretary said the performance of those officers was dissatisfactory and therefore, they should improve it through “drastic steps” to benefit patients.

He warned that noncompliance with his orders would lead to necessary action under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government Servants (Efficiency & Discipline) E&D Rules, 2011.

The secretary asked the DHOs of Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Upper Chitral, Charsadda, Mansehra, Karak, Upper and Lower Kohistan, Kolai-Palas, Bannu, North Waziristan, and Hangu districts to address people’s complaints at the earliest.

Similar directions were issued to the medical superintendents of DHQ hospitals of Lakki Marwat, Landi Kotal in Khyber, Miramshah in North Waziristan, Karak, KDA in Kohat, Mardan, Swabi, Bajaur and Battagram, tehsil headquarters hospitals of Booni and Drosh in Chitral, Kulachi in Dera Ismail Khan, Samarbagh in Lower Dir, Tangi in Charsadda, Chakdara in Lower Dir, and Sarhad Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases, Government Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital and Moulvi Ameer Shah Memorial Hospital in Peshawar, Category D Hospital in Havelian of Abbottabad, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Teaching Hospital in Abbottabad, Category D hospital of Pacha Kalay in Buner and Mian Rashid Hussain Shaheed Memorial Hospital in Pabbi of Nowshera.

The secretary also showed “deep concern over the dissatisfactory performance” of the director-general of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Services Academy Peshawar, the project director of the provincial TB Control Programme and the director of the Independent Monitoring Unit and asked them to improve it to prevent punitive action.

Sources told Dawn that most complaints were lodged by hospital visitors with the citizen portal of PMRU about medicine shortages, the absence of doctors and other staff members, dereliction of duty by those on duty, and out-of-order equipment.

They added that the complainants did so only after their requests to the relevant DHOs for better facilities in hospitals and other centres fell on deaf ears.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2024