PESHAWAR: As the meeting of selection board is going to take place this month, Provincial Doctors Association has asked health department to remove ambiguities from the list to pave the way for promotion of eligible doctors to next grades.

The list, prepared by the department, includes about 7,000 doctors in BPS-17 and 600 of them will be promoted to BPS-18. However, the list is fraught with huge mistakes as there are more than 800 doctors, who have already joined jobs in medical teaching institutions (MTIs), or work as district specialists or have gone abroad while some have died, according to sources.

They say that some of the doctors, whose names have been reflected in the list, work as assistant professors and associate professors in MTIs. The promotion process was previously rejected because there were some doctors in the lists, who had been recruited during the Covid-19 pandemic without creation of posts for them. Such doctors had been adjusted against the posts, which were vacant because of leaves or training of doctors, sources said.

“Now health department has 5,437 sanctioned posts in BPS-17. They are eligible for promotion to BS-18 because more than 1,700 doctors, appointed during Covid-19, are not among sanctioned positions. The number of total strength of BPS-17 medical officers is 7,147. It shows that 1,710 are not on the record as far as sanctioned posts are concerned,” they said.

Selection board meeting to take place this month

The president of Provincial Doctors Association (PDA), Dr Amir Taj Khan, said that doctors’ promotion should be expedited and all ambiguities should be removed from the seniority list of BPS-17 and BPS-18 general cadre and BPS-19 management cadre immediately. He said that scores of doctors retired in the same grades in which they were appointed that’s why he was seeking correction in the list before the meeting of Provincial Selection Board (PSB).

He said that the process of promotion of doctors began in 2017 when government approved service structure but the main issue was anomalies in the list that might jeopardise the entire process and deprive doctors of their long overdue promotions.

Dr Amir has also written a letter to the secretary of health department recently wherein he has requested him to issue appropriate direction to quarters concerned, such as section officers, additional director general human resource and director human resource management at the offices of directorate general health services to complete all working papers in both soft and hard forms on priority basis for upcoming meeting of PSB to be held in the current month.

He said that correct and approved seniority list should be notified for promotion of doctors along with annual confidential reports and independent monitoring unit’s reports. He said that working papers should be also prepared for promotion of all district specialists and dental surgeons as their cases had long been overdue.

Dr Amir said that PDA was striving hard to improve patient care and therefore wanted the government to expedite promotion of doctors, who had been serving people in every nook and corner of the province. He said that if the existing lists were sent to PSB’s meeting, scores of deserving doctors, who fulfilled criteria for promotion, would be deprived of their right.

“The meeting of PSB takes place on quarterly basis under chief secretary for which the department needs to present transparent lists with a view to ensure timely promotion of civil servants,” he said.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2025