PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is set to make minor amendments to the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, enforced in 2015, insisting the move will “further streamline” financial and administrative matters of the teaching hospitals and affiliated medical and dental colleges in the province.
Officials told Dawn that the proposed amendments, already tabled in the provincial assembly by the law minister, were likely to be passed next Monday.
They said the government had incorporated several amendments to the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act (MTIRA) from time to time since the law’s passage in 2015.
The officials said until now, the MTIRA had been extended to 11 MTIs, which are governed by respective boards of governors.
Officials insist move will ‘further streamline’ matters of teaching hospitals, affiliated colleges
The BoG members are nominated by the Search and Nomination Council, headed by the health minister, while the final notification is issued by the chief minister.
The officials said under the current law, the MTI BoGs were authorised to appoint dean, medical, hospital, finance and nursing directors for a period of three months on temporary basis in case any of those posts fell vacant due to resignation or any other reason, and fill empty positions permanently.
They added that a lot of issues cropped up in making regular recruitments within three months, so the need for an amendment to the law was felt.
The officials said under the amended law, those positions would be handed over to people for four months instead of three months, with the period being used for appointing regular people. However, respective chairpersons will be required to seek BoG approval within two weeks.
The officials said in case the BoG didn’t recruit permanent persons within the specified period, the posts would be re-advertised and the interim appointees would be allowed for more than four months to work.
They said another law amendment aimed to make it binding upon all MTIs to adopt uniformed rules and regulations to be framed by the MTI Policy Board. The officials said presently, all MTIs had different rules and regulations with a lot of differences and the new amendment would do away with all discrepancies as all would pursue uniformed rules and regulations.
They said the proposed legislation also sought to include the heads of the affiliated branches in MTI in the institution management committees (IMCs) to enable the heads of Burns Centre, Institute of Kidney Diseases and Pakistan Institute of Community Ophthalmology to work as members of the committee of the MTI Hayatabad Medical Complex.
The officials said the same pattern would apply to all MTIs where the affiliated heads of the institutions would become part of the committee.
They said currently, the law declared that two persons would also be acting as members of IMCs at MTIs, but in the future, two faculty members would replace the persons as members.
The officials said in order to reduce unnecessary burden on the MTI Appellee Tribunal, the legislation would pave for setting up grievance committees at the level of MTI that would listen to complaints of the employees.
They added that the cases would reach the MTI Tribunal only after the decisions were made by those committees.
According to the proposed amendments, the health secretariat will extend support to the MTI Tribunal regarding cases. This will make the job of the tribunal much easier as the grievance committee reports regarding cases will be part of the proceedings and will help the tribunal in making the final verdict, according to the draft legislation.
Architects of the MTIRA insisted that consultation were held with BoG members and senior officials to fine-tune the MTI law.
Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2026
