LAHORE, Sept 18: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Tuesday suspended from service Executive District Officer (Health) Dr Inamul Haq owing to, what a senior official said, delay in releasing salary to the employees working under the dengue prevention and control programme.
“The decision has come in the middle of the campaign to prevent and control dengue, which is going on in the right direction due to joint efforts of heads of various departments like health secretary, commissioner, DCO and EDO,” the official said.
Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khwaja Salman Rafique is heading the programme.
Dr Inam is the third Lahore EDO health who has been suspended during an anti-dengue campaign in the last one year. Earlier, Dr Fayyaz Ranjha and Dr Umar Farooq had been awarded similar punishment by the chief minister.
The official said the CM suspended the EDO without listening to him. “Dr Inam came to know about his suspension when he was waiting in a side room of the 180-H, Model Town residence of Shahbaz Sharif,” the official said, adding that he (Dr Inam) returned home disappointed shortly after receiving ‘verbal orders’ that his services were no more required.
The official said the role of the EDO was highly important in prevention of an epidemic particularly in the provincial capital (Lahore) which was highly vulnerable to the dengue virus.
He said sudden suspension of the experienced senior official (the health EDO) would leave adverse impact on the ongoing campaign. He said the EDO had nothing to do with the salary issue and the ‘charges’ framed against him without issuing him notice or warning sent a wave of panic among other officials.
A source said Shahbaz Sharif got annoyed on the ‘complaint’ of non-issuance of salary to the employees attached to the dengue prevention and control programme for July and August.
He said the salary was to be disbursed under ‘Prevention and Control Program of Epidemics in Punjab’. The Punjab government had launched the PCPE last year at a cost of Rs809 million initially for five districts -- Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi.
It had granted approval to 1,818 posts of various categories in grades one to 19. Of these new posts, the source said, 1,507 had been filled.
The vacancies are: additional director general vector-borne diseases, manager operation, manager partnership, manager enforcement, manager training, entomologist, assistant entomologist, data entry operator, CDC supervisors, lady health workers, sanitary patrol, inspector environment and accountant.
The source said Rs809 were not released to run this critical project by the Planning and Development and Finance departments in the beginning of 2012. The Directorate General Health Services had demanded immediate release of Rs605 million to run the project for the time being but the two departments had allocated only Rs300 million.
Of the allocated amount, the source said the Finance Department had released a meagre Rs20 million only in the first week of August despite knowing that the dengue season was approaching.
The officials at the DG health office termed this amount ‘ridiculous’, saying Rs25 million alone were required exclusively under the head of salary of all the officials and employees hired under the PCPE.
Resultantly, the employees and other officials could not get salaries in time for the two months, which irked the CM, the source said.
In Lahore, there are 84 CDC supervisors, 252 sanitary patrol, 240 (out of 292 posts) lady health workers, 66 data entry operators and 72 (out of 86 posts) environment inspectors.
The source said on the intervention of the health secretary and the Lahore DCO, an amount of Rs80 million was released last week and the employees got salaries for two months.