LAHORE: Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has awarded Basic Scale 21 to three senior medics of the public sector medical institutions of the province.
Those who got promoted to BS-21 also include Prof Mahmood Ayaz, the head of the Special Medical Board constituted for the treatment of three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Prof Ayaz is also principal of the Services Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS), besides being counsler of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan.
The two others who got BS-21 include Dean of the Children’s Hospital/the Institute of Child Health Lahore Prof Masood Sadiq and professor of ENT at Allama Iqbal Medical College Lahore Dr Mohammad Rashid Zia.
These three doctors have been shortlisted out of 20 senior professors of various disciplines.
The chief minister accorded approval to grant them BS-21 after the provincial selection board-I sent him recommendations on Oct 9.
The Punjab government issued a notification in this respect through the Services and General Administration Department (S&GAD) on Monday.
An official privy to the information told Dawn that most of the medics who were better placed on the seniority list of the professors of various state-run institutions across the province could not qualify for the distinction.
The list was revised and notified by the Specialized Healthcare & Medical Education Department recently, the official said. He said the three medics who were promoted to BS-21 were at the 14th, 17th and 20th position on the officially notified seniority list of the Punjab government.
Three serving vice chancellors of the state-run medical varsities of Punjab were also among those who failed to get the BS-21 — Fatima Jinnah Medical University VC Prof Dr Aamir Zaman Khan, Faisalabad Medical University VC Prof Zafar Chaudhry and Nishtar Medical University VC Prof Mustafa Kamal.
Similarly, AIMC Principal Prof Arif Tajamal, former principal of SIMS Prof Dr Hamid Mahmood Butt and former principal and registrar of the King Edward Medical University Prof Irshad Hussain Qureshi were also ignored.
The official said the BS-21 was given to those medics who had done “something extraordinary above and beyond their job description”.
Senior medics were shocked to know that one of them — Prof Rashid Zia — was removed from the post of AIMC principal by the Supreme Court on administrative grounds.
He said those who had been transferred from Lahore to other districts to serve as principals and VCs were not considered for the distinction. Similarly, many others who were going to retire in the coming months were also ignored.
Some of them have decided to challenge the Punjab government’s decision in this respect, the official said.
Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2019
