PESHAWAR, Aug 10: The health department's plan to appoint consultants in different specialities at the Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) to speed up research activities is yet to produce the desired results , owing to political interference in the health department, sources in the department told Dawn.

"With a view to reducing the workload on professors at the teaching hospitals, the former secretary health, Salim Khan Jhagra, had floated the idea in 1996 to appoint consultants at the PGMI so that professors could do research work," said an official.

To begin with, 18 posts of BPS-18 for various departments were created, with the condition that the ones to be appointed on such posts would cater to the needs of the patients instead of the professors so that the latter could find more time for research purposes.

The officials said that at the same time the provincial government also granted financial and administrative autonomy to the major teaching hospitals with a view to improve their health services.

"In fact, the teaching hospitals of the city had been granted complete financial as well as administrative autonomy but the political interference in the affairs of these institutions hampered the plan made by the then health secretary," they added.

According to the officials, these hospitals are yet to get rid of the provincial government's influence and the autonomy plan remain far from implemented. The previous military-led government as well as the incumbent MMA government, they said, had been intervening in the affairs of these hospitals so much so that the autonomy plan seem to have been consigned to the dustbin.

All these posts have been filled, but against the plan. The new appointees are working in the hospitals along with the professors. According to the plan, the new appointees would cater to the needs of the patients, whereas the professors would be relieved from the hospitals and carry out research activities at the PGMI.

A case in point is the appointment of a junior doctor at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) on senior post. According to the autonomy plan, the hospital concerned should have made such appointments but the officials said that political interference was causing problems.

"For such appointments, the hospitals have got institutional management committees (IMCs), but several activists of the ruling MMA are the members of these committees, who manipulate the appointments," said an official in health department.

"The then secretary had planned that the new posts would be created at the PGMI. The consultants would see patients and the professors do only research work," he said.

He further said that the appointment of a consultant at the LRH was not the only example. "There are scores of other appointments due to which the aggrieved doctors have either taken their cases to court or (the appointments) are being probed by the committees constituted by the health department," the official said.

The health department also issued a notification asking the chief executive of the LRH to allow the same doctor to perform duties as a consultant in BPS-18 despite the fact that he happened to be junior than his competitors.

The appointment of the said doctor on a post of BPS-18, despite the fact that he was in BPS-17, raised many eyebrows in the medical community. The officials also revealed that the head of the department in which the doctor had been appointed as a consultant, had objected to the notification issued by the health department and sought clarification on the job description of the said doctor.