PESHAWAR: The health department has expressed concern over failure of its employees to respond to its directives about submitting details of official vehicles in their use and has warned them to provide the information to secretariat by end of this month after which such automobiles will be treated as illegal.

In a letter issued to all relevant officials, the department has warned that they would not get petrol, oil lubricant (POL) and maintenance and repair charges from the government and excise and taxation department would be requested to retrieve all such vehicles that were not reflected in the record.

The letter has been sent to director-general health services, director-general drugs, all project directors, district health officers, medical superintendents of district and tehsil headquarters hospitals and rural health centres and heads of Pakistan Institute of Prosthetic and Orthotic Sciences (PEPOS), Paraplegic Centre, Health Care Commission and managing director of Health Foundation. They have been directed to enter data of the vehicles into dash board of human resource management information system (HRMIS) by October 31 of face legal action.

The letter entitled ‘details of all vehicles’ said that the department had sought the information in July of the current year but only 43 vehicles were registered so far.

Letter says automobiles not listed till Oct 31 will be treated as illegal

It said that a meeting, held recently with adviser to chief minister on health in the chair, had taken exception to non-compliance of the previous directives in that regard. The department, it said, had tasked deputy director procurement and deputy director coordination at the director-general health services to obtain details of all types of vehicle procured on regular side, project, authorities and foundation side or donated to the department.

About three months ago, the department had asked all the officials to feed data into a separate dashboard created in human resource management information system (HRMIS) within 20 days.

The department once again reiterated that data of all vehicles procured may immediately be entered into the dashboard by October 31 and in case of non-compliance, fuel, maintenance and repair expenses would not be paid to the officials concerned. The vehicles not reflected in the dashboard of HRMIS would be treated as illegal and the office of Accountant General was requested that from November onwards, expenses charges in lieu of the fuel and maintenance of such might not be cleared, it added.

In addition, the director general audit office was requested to report paras against offices that did not enter complete details of all vehicles in the dashboard by the given deadline, it said. The excise and taxation department will take necessary action under the relevant law for retrieval of all such vehicles.

Sources familiar with the development told Dawn that high-ranking officials were using dozens of vehicles donated by United Nations and other charity groups to government and autonomous organisations. They said that POL and maintenance charges of such vehicles were received from health department every month.

They said that even some officials, who retired months ago, did not return their official vehicles. They said that most of such vehicles could be seen on Saturdays and Sundays with official number plates in the markets despite the fact that those were meant to be utilised for official tasks. Many international organisations had donated expensive vehicles to the department but those were not utilised for the benefits of patients, they claimed.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2024