Federal secretary promises early filling of health ministry vacancies

Islamabad: While promising the delivery of quality healthcare to the residents of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) on their doorstep in line with Prime Minister Imran Khan’s reforms agenda, national health services secretary Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik has said all top vacancies at the organisations overseen by his ministry will be filled without delay.

“The promotion cases of hospital doctors and paramedical staff pending for decades will be taken by the first board on September 26. I assure all eligible doctors of promotion by October 15,” he told ‘The News’. The secretary said all vacant slots of the departmental heads had been advertised and they would be filled by Oct 15.

He said after assuming the secretary’s office two months ago, he got 16 basic health units in Islamabad Capital Territory, which were closed for 10 years, operational, ensured the provision of modern equipment and quality patient care in Islamabad’s hospitals, and got the spadework done for the long-awaited promotion of doctors and paramedics in just two months.

Dr Allah Bakhsh claimed that the executive directors of the city's two major hospitals, PIMS and Polyclinic, were selected by a search committee headed by the special assistant to the premier on health. If the service record and seniority is anything to go by, then he stands a good chance of being promoted to BPS-22 by the Central Selection Board in the next meeting.

Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik, the senior-most officer in BPS-21 with a doctorate degree in Development Economics and 35 years of civil service experience, has the distinction of being the first Pakistani and Muslim to claim the prestigious UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy over his leadership role for promoting education and skill development among the less affluent and disenfranchised people.

Having a knack for development economics, social science, management and institutional development, he has to his credit the leading of professional teams in the inter-sectoral, multi-temporal and cross-disciplinary fields of education, health, governance, institutional development, planning, development and reforms at both national and international levels.

As Punjab education secretary, managing director of the Punjab Education Foundation and chairman of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, he introduced the public-private partnership in the education sector (Foundation Assisted Schools) for the first time, which has now become one of the largest programmes around the world with 2.8 million enrolments. His PPP model was later accepted as the world's best replicate model by the lead journal, Economist, for low-cost schools for affordable quality education.

Dr Allah Bakhsh also pioneered other successful programmes like Education Voucher Scheme, Teaching in Clusters by Subject Specialists and Continuous Professional Development Programme, which are benefitting more than three million children. He also formulated the Punjab Youth Policy, 2012, National TVET Policy, 2015, and Punjab Early Childhood Education and Development, and supervised the revision of the National Education Policy, 2009.