PESHAWAR, April 14: Thousands of paramedics, employed in public sector health care institutions of the province, have been waiting for their service structure for long, office-bearers of a paramedical association told Dawn .
The finance department had sanctioned Rs14.6million for the service structure, but bureaucrats had been trying to block the move, said Sirajuddin Burki, NWFP president of the association. At present the finance department is spending Rs45million on the salaries of 8,680 paramedics per annum in the NWFP.
Whereas in Fata, an additional amount of Rs7.96 million is required for the service structure of 2,103 paramedics. Mr Burki said a decisive meeting had been held under the finance minister and now the health and finance departments were required to prepare the summary and send it to the chief minister for approval.
"This is an awesome situation. About 12,500 (10,000 in the NWFP and 2,500 in Fata) paramedics, including dispensers, X-ray, ECG and laboratory technicians, and operation theatre and anaesthesia assistants have no service structure and many retire from the service in the same grade in which they are appointed," lamented Mr Burki.
According to him, the paramedics along with doctors and nurses, constituted a health care network and without their help it was impossible to run even a small clinic. But only 100 people had been promoted to grade 16 after decades of services, he said.
Many paramedics, he said, had got higher qualification like MA, MSc, BA and BSc, but to no avail because the government had withdrawn the additional increment given for higher qualification.
Paramedics after passing their matriculation examination (science group) complete one year training at government hospitals in about 10 various disciplines and then they take examination conducted by the NWFP medical faculty.
But the role of the faculty established in 1970 was not as effective as that of the nursing board, he said, adding that many candidates often complained of errors in gazette book and out-of-course question papers because the under-staffed and ill-equipped faculty was housed in two tiny rooms and therefore unable to take care of all matters in an error-free manner.
After getting through the said examination, they are appointed in grade-6 and most of them retire in the same grade even after serving for 25 years.
To improve the standards of their education and make chances of their promotion bright, a task force was constituted in 1997 which ultimately recommended the stoppage of a one-year training and recommended to the government to open colleges for paramedics so that they could get higher education.
The then chief minister inaugurated four colleges, one each in Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Abbottabad and Swat in March 1999. These colleges operate under the Provincial Health Services Academy, offering degrees as well as diplomas in different branches of medical technologies.
Now about 200 paramedics had graduated from the colleges, but they are unsure about their promotion into next grades, the president of the association said.