LAHORE, Oct 16: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) has condemned the selection of Punjab health minister Prof Dr Mahmood Ahmad Chaudhry as chairman of the University of Health Sciences’ (UHC) Board of Governors.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, PMA president Prof Dr Yasmin Rashid said the PMA had been saying all along that Prof Chaudhry was working to set up a university only to secure an influential office.

Prof Rashid also condemned health minister’s ‘manoeuvring’ to secure his post through interviews in newspapers and meetings with possible future rulers.

She alleged that the minister had got his favourites admitted to post-graduate classes in violation of the merit. During his stay in the office, she said, medicines had not been purchased for hospitals for 11 months of the last financial year and purchased in bulk only in the last month.

She said a convicted health secretary in collaboration with the health minister had also arranged for his convicted brother to complete his jail-term in an air-conditioned room of a public hospital.

She termed the minister’s statement as hypocritical wherein he had claimed that the government was ‘compelled’ to make medical education and medicines costly.