PESHAWAR, April 17: An NGO has urged the NWFP government to set up a burns unit in at least one major hospital in the province and said that there was no such centre at the government level.

Chairman of the Watan Welfare Society Dr Said Alam Mehsud at a news conference held at the local press club here on Monday said that an expatriate, Prof Tahir Hasan from Scotland, had offered financial and technical support to the NWFP government for the establishment of a fully-fledged burns centre at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar but the provincial government had not yet responded.

He said that a unit run by his NGO in Peshawar had treated more than 3,500 patients during the past six years, adding that the unit should be five wards in view of the high incidence of burn cases.

He said that the provincial government should respond to the offer within a month if it was genuinely interested in solving people’s problems.

He said that successive provincial governments had promised to set up a burns centres in a major hospital, adding that a plque had been unveiled by former NWFP chief minister Sardar Mehtab and the incumbent chief minister Akram Khan Durrani but no practical steps had yet been taken till date.