ISLAMABAD, July 30: In an unprecedented move, an international donor has forced the ministry of health to remove a newly appointed director of the malaria control programme by withholding assistance of $26 million.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major contributor to the country’s primary healthcare programme, had objected to the appointment of Aslam Khan and termed him a “non-performer and unqualified person”.

The fund withheld the disbursement of the first instalment of its grant.

Mr Khan was appointed late last month reportedly on the recommendation of an NWFP politician.

Sources said that Information Minister Sherry Rehman, who also looks after the ministry of health, had overruled bureaucracy’s objections to the appointment, but the fund lodged a strong protest against the change in the programme’s leadership.

In a letter to Health Secretary Khushnood Lashari, Global Fund’s manager J. Scott Morey reminded the government that disbursement of funds was conditional to “continued level of management expertise and the appointment of qualified senior managers”.

It was said that appointments of unqualified managers on “political basis” in programmes funded by them were unacceptable.

Mr Khan had previously served on the project and had been removed in 2006 for “lacking the capacity to run the programme” and improper fund utilisation. At that time also, the fund had prematurely cut off its funding.

In its correspondence, the fund reminded the health secretary of “past grant lapses and premature termination of former malaria grants”.

The ministry is understood to have persuaded Ms Rehman to replace Mr Khan with Dr Altaf Hussain Bosan.

“His appointment has been welcomed both at home and internationally … as a step … to bolstering malaria control efforts in Pakistan,” an official statement of the health ministry said.

However, it appears that the circumstances under which Mr Khan has been sacked have not been understood by his sponsors, who, according to sources, blamed the ministry’s bureaucracy for the decision. They are reported be urging senior officials of the ministry to get the orders reverted.

But, according to the sources, the officials are trying to convince them that political expediencies should kept aside in greater national interests, to save the assistance from being lost.