PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has initiated the process to extend the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act to Khyber Institute of Child Health Peshawar and Saidu Group of Teaching Hospital Swat.

In a letter, the department directed the medical superintendent of the SGTH Swat and director of the KICH to “provide budgetary details on priority to proceed with the plan of bringing both institutes under the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act (MTIRA).”

They were also asked to furnish information regarding the budget of the salary and non-salary items on monthly and annual bases in addition to details of the revenue generated, and reveal if they need any fresh posts for the planned transition with its financial implications.

In the letter, also sent to the secretary of the health department and deputy secretary (MTIs), the department directed both hospitals to mention the financial cost associated with the proposal. Once the information is received then it will be sent to finance department and after that to law department for approval before declaring both the health facilities MTIs.

Dept seeks budgetary details from the health facilities

The government has enforced MTIRA in 10 hospitals and their affiliated medical and dental colleges since its passage by the assembly in 2015, causing those intuitions to slip away from the control of the health department. They are now being run through their respective board of governors.

Officials said that the idea behind bringing those hospitals under MTI gained momentum after pediatricians requested to extend the law to KICH to expedite work on it.

They said that KICH, which was currently under the health department but managed by BoG of the Hayatabad Medical Complex, had been facing long construction delays.

The officials said the HMC BoG was “too busy to find time” to look into the issues of KICH, forcing the Pakistan Paediatric Association to demand a separate BoG to ensure its early completion.

They said that construction began more than 15 years ago.

Officials said that the institute was partially functional, while 90 per cent of the work on its affiliated 200-bed Child Hospital had been completed. They that said red tape had been a major cause for delay in its construction.

Paediatricians said work on the institute started in June 2013, with the cost being estimated in PC-I at Rs2.2 billion, but the PC-I was later revised and approved by Ecnec with a cost of Rs7.9 billion. Of the amount, Rs5.8 billion has so far been released, according to them.

Last month, the third tranche of Rs400 million was released, but the slow pace of work has upset the health department.

Paediatricians said KP didn’t have any dedicated children’s hospital unlike other three provinces where state-of-the-art children’s hospitals and child health institutes existed.

They said the institute would become functional only when the MTI was extended to it and a separate BoG took decisions free from the health and other departments.

Officials said that health department had already extended the law to the teaching hospitals, except the SGTH, but architects of the MTIRA wanted to bring it, too, under the law.

They added that efforts had been escalated to extend the law to the SGTH and run it through BoG instead of the health department.

They claimed that despite lapse of 10 years, the hospitals operating through MTIs hadn’t delivered good and bringing more institutions under it would be an exercise in futility.

However, official sources insisted that the chief minister had already approved the plan to place both hospitals under the MTIRA.

Published in Dawn, June 2nd, 2025