PESHAWAR, Feb 12: Health employees observed one-day strike at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Peshawar, on Tuesday and asked the government to announce service structure for doctors, nurses and class-IV staff and rescind the essential health services notification.
They also asked the provincial health department to take them on board while taking decisions concerning improvement of patients’ care.
The employees of Khyber Teaching Hospital will observe one-day strike on Wednesday and Hayatabad Medical Complex on Thursday as part of their protest to press the government for acceptance of their demands.
Enraged by the government’s lack of response to their appeals concerning resolution of their long-standing problems, they also announced to hold a sit-in protest near Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on February 19 if their demands were not accepted.
The Tuesday’s strike observed on the call of All Health Employees Coordination Council brought miseries to thousands of patients at the province’s biggest hospital, as doctors, paramedics, nurses and class-IV staff stayed away from their duty and held protest demonstration where their leaders spoke.
The council’s general secretary, Jauhar Ali, said that the health department had been unable to implement the Peshawar High Court’s directives for formation of a body consisting of employees’ representatives and it issued a controversial notification through which essential health services rules had been partially implemented.
“We urge the PHC chief justice to take notice of the health department’s notification that had been issued arbitrarily. The court had directed the health department to form a joint representative body to be headed by vice-chancellor of Khyber Medical University, but it instead issued a notification of essential health services that created unrest among the employees,” Mr Ali said.
The PHC’s directives were meant to take on board all the employees concerning policy formulation and decision making to resolve their problems and pave the way for better health delivery to patients, he said.
Mr Ali said that the government’s decision to launch Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Medical College in a building primarily built to house the postgraduate paramedical institute was a sheer injustice with 12,000 paramedics, and demanded that decision be revoked immediately to end unrest among paramedics.
He said that the government had got a vast space in the postgraduate medical institute at the HMC, which should be allotted to the college or it should begin second shifts in the existing nine medical colleges on the pattern of Punjab to produce more doctors. “We will resist the decision because it would slam the door of higher studies on paramedics,” he said.
The council’s secretary said that lack of service structure for young doctors and other health staff had been affecting their work and demanded that these employees should be given equal chances of promotion.
Meanwhile, outpatient departments, operation theatres and diagnostic services at the LRH remained closed and only the critically ill or injured patients were provided treatment.