PESHAWAR, July 3: The GTZ — a Germany-based international organisation for sustainable development — is likely to transfer the services of one of its appointees to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government, following the reluctance of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to appoint a foreigner as the head of one of its hospitals, according to credible sources.

After it became known that the provincial government was reluctant to appoint a foreigner as the chief executive of the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), the AJK government had shown interest in appointing the same person in Muzaffarabad, said the sources. “We have now been asked by another government to transfer the expert to their hospital and we are most likely to agree to this request,” a senior official with the GTZ told Dawn.

If the NWFP government changed its mind by the end of the year or the next year, we would have to start the same approval process all over again, he said.

The NWFP government was to pay Rs150,000 per month to the newly-appointed chief executive of the LRH, while the rest of the amount was to be paid by the Centre for International Migration (CIM), another German organisation.

The health department sent a summary to the chief minister over the issue in late March which is still awaiting approval.

The sources said the NWFP health minister reportedly received a call from Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, asking him not to appoint a German as chief executive of the LRH. The sources said the minister had managed to convince Mr Qazi on the appointment of a German as it was in public interest, but the JI chief made another call later, asking the minister to put the issue on the back-burner.

They said the professors of the LRH had convinced the JI chief that the appointment of a foreigner to the coveted position would bring a bad name to the NWFP government.A few days ago the provincial government appointed a professor to the aforesaid position.

Sources at the GTZ said the government’s recurrent expenditure on the LRH, which staffs 2,500 employees, was $6 million per year, but the institution’s performance was declining by the day.