MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 24: More than 60 posts of medical officers in the AJK Health Department have been lying vacant for a long time as a majority of doctors are unwilling to accept the salary packages offered by the government, it has been learnt.

The doctors already serving the various rural and urban healthcare facilities are also not satisfied with the salaries they are drawing. The sense of dissatisfaction harboured by most of these doctors turns into frustration when they see their co-professionals availing lucrative packages against the same services, a survey by this correspondent has revealed.

The government has, however, realised the problem.

According to AJK Minister for Health Dr Najeeb Naqi, attractive salary packages are being proposed for public-sector doctors to overcome the shortage.

"Doctors are not ready to join government service on the existing pay scales. We are fully alive to the situation and working on introducing attractive salary packages for doctors," he told Dawn.

A doctor, who has to perform night duty on rotation apart from his regular duty of minimum eight hours a day, draws the same salary that a simple graduate serving any other government department in the same scale does.

The health minister, who himself is a medical graduate, acknowledged this and said the salaries of doctors should be higher due to the sensitive and specialised nature of their profession.

"We will increase allowances for doctors across the board, but those serving in the peripheries will get more than their counterparts based in towns," he said.

He said the government was analysing its financial resources and would shortly introduce an ‘incentive package’ for doctors.

Replying to a question, Dr Naqi said the government had also asked the non-governmental organisations rendering services in the health sector to coordinate in this regard. "They should top up the wages of doctors in the public sector," he said.

In reply to a question, he said the shortage of specialists, particularly anaesthetists, had badly hit the public-sector health facilities.

"It's because they prefer to serve abroad for attractive salaries," he said.

According to the health department, at least 47 doctors, mostly specialists, have obtained long leave and been serving in foreign countries for a long time.

Of late, the department has warned them to get back to their duties or face sacking. A doctor told Dawn that lack of promotion opportunities for government doctors in AJK was also a major cause of brain drain in this sector.