Mushtaq Jadoon didn’t agree with this impression. He said the appointment had been made for an interim period after the previous principal of the college completed his three-year tenure.
Secondly, he said stay order of the PHC is only for the appointment of medical director and hospital directors. “Why would we go against the court order? This is an interim arrangement and she will work as principal till the post is advertised and the new principal is appointed,” the health secretary said.
He said the MTI Act was in place but since regulations had not been framed, the government could make such appointments through a notification.
Mushtaq Jadoon said after the recent amendments in the MTI Act, the post of dean would now be called only “dean”. However, Prof Dr Iqbal Begum would work as principal, he said.
The PTI government had announced the setting up of medical college in Swabi in 2013.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Asad Qaisar, who belongs to Swabi, had announced in 2013 that classes in the medical college would start in 2014, but this hasn’t happened.
Some critics are of the view that Dr Iqbal Begum miserably failed in her task and could not establish the college faculty.
“The only thing she had done during her tenure was to appoint around 200 people recommended by the chief minister and the speaker in the college and the hospitals there,” a senior official of the health department said.
Dr Iqbal Begum, however, denied the charges, saying she had been working as professor in grade-20 since 2003 and was denied her right to be promoted to grade-21 by certain influential people in the Health Department. “Since I am female and lacked any political affiliation, therefore I had been denied my promotion to grade-21 since 2003,” she added.
After her appointment last year, the government gave her the task of establishing faculty for the medical college and up-gradation of the adjacent hospital that would serve as tertiary care hospital for Gajju Khan Medical College.