PESHAWAR: The non-technical employees at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) Peshawar on Thursday turned violent and tortured the Medical Director of the institution Prof Dr Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi and Hospital Director Dr Khalid Masud.
Dr Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi and Dr Khalid Masud suffered injuries but were rescued by the faculty members.All the class-IV employees of the public health sector had been on strike for the past five days across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This had paralysed the healthcare services in all the public hospitals of the province.
The protesting workers had forcibly suspended all the services except emergency cover in all the tertiary care hospitals, district headquarters hospitals, tehsil hospitals, rural health centers and basic health units of the province.
They wanted the government to pay them Health Professional Allowance (HPA) like it has given to paramedics and nursing staff.The class-IV employees include sweepers, ward orderlies, information technology workers and clerks serving in the public sector hospitals.
The patientssuffered at the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) , Khyber Teaching Hospital ( KTH), Hayatabad Medical Complex ( HMC) all in Peshawar, Mardan Medical Complex (MMC) in Mardan, Ayub Teaching Hospital ( ATH) in Abbottabad, and elsewhere in Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Swat, etc.
During their strike, the protestors not only stopped doctors from providing services to the patients, but also refused to clean hospitals and wards and remove clinical waste from operation theatres and laboratories.
In LRH, the largest public sector hospital of the province where thousands of patients daily come from different parts of the province, Afghanistan and nearby districts of Punjab, the nonstop strike prompted the hospital director, Dr Khalid Masud to utilise services of private people when the hospital sweepers refused to do their work. However, the protesting employees neither agreed to do their work nor allowed the private workers to clean the hospital.
On Thursday, Medical Director Prof Mukhtiar Zaman Afridi and Hospital Director Dr Khalid Masud along with some faculty members decided to clean the hospital by themselves.“We thought the protesting employees would join us when we start the cleanliness work. However, they didn’t care and immediately approached us and started beating the medical director and hospital director. The medical director tried to save his face and head and suffered injuries on his arms,” said a senior official of the hospital.
Hospital Director Dr Khalid Masud also confirmed physical violence of the protesting workers on them.“We didn’t expect such treatment from these people. We always treated them like young brothers and worked for their interest, But today they exposed themselves and proved they are criminals, not health workers,” said Dr Khalid Masud. He said he didn’t expect violence and that was the reason for not calling the police during the past four days of their protest.
The LRH administration lodged FIR against union leaders ?such as Mohammad Ali, Waris Khan, Asif, Alamgir and Shahid Ghori.?A senior LRH official held the health secretariat and office of the director general of health services responsible for prolonging the issue of class-IV employees.
“We have written several letters to the secretary health, DG Health, deputy commissioner Peshawar and Home Secretary to find an amicable solution of the issue of class-IV employees. We even requested the secretary health and DG office to transfer services of the union leaders who created security problems for them by inviting all the health department workers of ?the province to LRH. None of these government officials paid attention to our requests,” the official complained.
Also, they held the government and particularly the finance and health ministers responsible for first making a commitment with the employees in November 2016 about providing them HPA and then backtracking from the promise promise.
In November, the class-IV workers gathered near the Jinnah park in Peshawar and ?blocked the main road for traffic.Provincial Finance Minister Muzaffar Sayyad later held negotiations ?with them and promised that the government would pay them HPA. This reassurance prompted the protestors to call off the protest.
The health department later sent a summary to the chief minister who refused to approve it, arguing that the non-technical employees were not professionals and were therefore not entitled to be paid health professional allowance.
It enraged these employees and they went on strike across the province. The health department on Thursday decided to make cuts from salaries of the striking workers if they didn’t join duty.