ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and the Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH) were unable to utilize millions of rupees allocated for developmental activities from 2000-01 to 2003-04.
This was stated by Federal Minister for Health Mohammad Nasir Khan while placing record before the Senate in response to queries put up by senators regarding dismally-low utilization of developmental budget allocated for two federal government hospitals in the capital.
The record placed before the Upper House showed that Pims was allocated Rs100.77 million as development budget in 2003-04, but the hospital could utilize Rs25.7 million.
During 2002-03, Rs74 million was allocated for the hospital, but it could utilize only Rs28.9 million. During 2001-02, Pims could utilize only Rs19 million of the total developmental budget of Rs71 million.
Similarly, the statistics for the FGSH showed that during 2001-02, only Rs18 million was utilized out of developmental budgetary allocations of Rs320.6 million.
The health minister also admitted on the occasion that his ministry was providing "silly" information to the Upper House. However, the minister stopped short of taking the blame on himself and held the bureaucrats serving under him responsible for what he said was a "silly" answer.
"We have a problem with bureaucracy," he said. The minister was put in the dock when a written answer submitted to the Senate under his name said the government had no proposal under consideration to increase the health budget.
"This is a typical bureaucratic answer," the minister said while trying to convince the house that efforts were underway to increase the allocations for health sector. The minister also informed the house that health allocations were dismally low at just 0.72 per cent of the total federal budget of Rs868 billion in 2003-04.
The minister, while giving comparison of budgetary allocations for health in different countries, accepted that his government's allocations for health sector were less than those made by many other countries, including India and Sri Lanka.
The statistics placed before the house by the minister showed that from 1999-2000 to 2003-04, the allocations for health remained less than one per cent of the total budgetary allocations.
The health minister also took the challenge by ANP's Asfandyar Wali to explain the dichotomy in his answer for providing "Health for All" with meagre budgetary allocations. "I fail to understand how the government is committed to Health for All when adequate funds are not allocated for health sector," Senator Wali said.
Taking the gauntlet thrown by Mr Wali, the minister said he had given details of allocations only for the federal government, while the budgetary allocation for health by the provincial governments stood much higher.
Answering a supplementary question by Dr Abdullah Riar about "meagre" collections from patients by the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, the health minister said he would check the facts and come back with the figures.