The Sindh government’s spokesman said on Saturday that the federal government does not have the required resources to run the three public hospitals of Karachi that the Centre is taking over.
Holding a news conference at the provincial assembly, Barrister Murtaza Wahab censured the federal government’s move to form a governing body to run the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and the National Institute of Child Health (NICH).
“Is this the time to provide relief to the people or to gain control [of the three hospitals]? Instead of extending any relief to the health workers, they are being annoyed.”
Wahab said that the recurring budget and salaries of the staff members of the three hospitals are likely to become a problematic issue for the Centre. He added that the provincial government has completely met the expenses of these three hospitals to date.
He said that patients from not only Sindh but also from all over Pakistan visit these hospitals to avail free medical services. He added that that the provincial government has provided Rs3.42 billion to the JPMC in the current financial year and Rs3.8 billion to the NICVD.
He pointed out that the three hospitals have received a total of Rs12 billion from the Sindh government while the federal government has not paid them anything despite its plan to take over them.
“The prime minister has just now started distributing health cards, while we have been providing expensive treatment free of charge since the past many years.”
Wahab said that the documented minutes of the meeting of the federal cabinet held on July 2, 2019 prove that the Centre is unable to meet the expenses of these hospitals, so their control should be returned to Sindh.
He said that the provincial government has in this case spent its own budget to serve the federation. He also mentioned the apex judiciary’s decision, according to which the Sindh government needs to be paid back the expenses it has borne to run these hospitals.
He urged the federal government to immediately withdraw the notification announcing the forming of a governing body to run the three hospitals so that the Sindh government continues to run these health facilities. He pointed out that the withdrawal of the notification is in the best interest of the country.
The takeover
On Thursday officials of the federal and Sindh governments had said that the Centre had started the process of taking over the JPMC, the NICVD and the NICH by forming an independent board of governors (BoG) under the Medical Teaching Ordinance.
“The federal government has started the process of taking over the JPMC, NICVD and NICH by forming a board of governors through the controversial Medical Teaching Ordinance. They have sought two names from me, but I don’t want to propose names as it would mean that I have agreed to hand over these institutions to them,” Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho said while talking to The News at her office.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan also confirmed that they were in the process of forming an independent board of governors to run these institutions, saying that he had approached the provincial health minister to seek the names for the board.
“I have requested names from her too for boards. We’ll put proper and uncontroversial professionals [in these boards],” Dr Sultan said when he was asked why they were being accused of appointing people to the BoG who were not from Karachi and had no experience of running the health institutions.
But the Sindh health minister was not satisfied with the process of the federal takeover of Karachi’s major health facilities. She said the federal health authorities did not approach the provincial health department to formally take over the hospitals, although they visited “the JPMC and the NICVD 10, 10 times”, and later simply asked her to propose two names for the BoG. “It never happens this way. How come they are going to run these facilities with people sitting in Islamabad and monitoring service delivery in Karachi? Actually, they were fearing contempt of court so they started the process of takeover hastily,” she said, adding that it was a futile exercise and would result in sufferings for the people of Karachi, other cities of Sindh and the entire Pakistan.
She claimed that non-medical persons were being appointed to the board to run these hospitals, which was not the way to handle and improve service delivery of tertiary-care health facilities. “They are asking to send two of our people to Islamabad to be part of their board, which would be overseeing the performance and functions of these facilities from there, which is not possible.”
Claiming that the Supreme Court had directed the federal government to reimburse all the expenses the Sindh government had incurred on these institutions since 2011, Dr Pechuho said that there were several issues, including the service structure of the employees and the status of the Jinnah Sindh Medical University, which must be settled before the takeover of these institutions by the Centre.
Responding to a query, she said that the federal government would send new managements to run these institutions after completing their exercise, but it would badly affect the service delivery of these institutions.
Fearing that the service delivery by these three health facilities would worsen following the federal takeover, she said that she had seen the performance of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and the Poly Clinic Islamabad as well as several health facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and those institutions were charging people for labs, investigations and radiological services, and burdening the poor people of the country.
“Since the PTI [Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf] came into power, poverty has skyrocketed and people are now unable to buy food in the country. In these circumstances, making health care unaffordable and starting to charge people would be a great offence.”
Dr Pechuho said that after the provincial government had taken over these hospitals, it had introduced state-of-the-art radiological services, cyber knife, PET scan and other facilities at the JPMC, while the NICVD was converted into a chain of dozens of complete separate heart care facilities, and the NICH was also undergoing a complete transformation.
“This process would not only stop but would also start reversing through this exercise of the federal government’s control, which has failed in the past too,” the health minister added.