Health employees warn of suspending services across KP

PESHAWAR: The Health Employees Coordination Council (HECC) and representatives of other doctor forums on Sunday warned of suspending health services across the province if the government didn’t change what they called its threatening attitude towards the doctors and other health workers.

The HECC, an association of all the health employees at LRH, and other forums of doctors, held a meeting and decided to collectively work for securing their rights.The HECC office-bearers held a meeting, with its president Prof Dr Musa Kalim in the chair, and took exception to the alleged threatening attitude of chairman Board of Governors Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) Prof Dr Nausherwan Burki with the hospital staff.

Khyber Teaching Hospital Teaching Staff Association president Dr Mohammad Ayaz, Young Doctors’ patron-in-chief Dr Alamgir, PDA’s Dr Jan Baz Afridi, Medical Officers Association’s Dr Jamshed Khan, Pakistan Medical Association’s Dr Hussain Ahmad Haroon, Malgari Doctoran’s Dr Saeedur Rahman, Islamic Medical Association’s Dr Habibur Rahman, Paramedical Association’s secretary general Syed Roedar Shah, and others, after attending the meeting, decided to close the hospitals if the government, particularly Dr Nausherwan Burki, didn’t change his attitude with them.

They asked the government and chairman BoG LRH to concentrate on patient care and repair out-of-order and broken equipment in the hospitals instead of threatening the doctors and health workers.

The doctors said Dr Burki wanted the hospitals to remain closed for two days, Saturday and Sunday, which will further aggravate problems of the patients. The doctors decided to collectively respond in case the government took any action against the doctors or any individual of the forum.

They complained that despite a commitment, the government reneged on its promises of providing health professional allowance to other health employees, besides doctors.

Dr Musa Kalim said that they had signed an agreement with the government at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat in presence of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, Health Minister Shahram Tarakai, Finance Minister Muzaffar Said, chief secretary and health secretary.

He said that under the accord, they had withdrawn their cases filed against MTI while the government accepted some of their demands.The doctor said it had been promised that besides doctors and other employees of provincial and federal governments, all the health employees would get health professional allowance.