Financial crisis badly hits hospitals in KP

PESHAWAR: The financial crisis of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has badly hit the MTI hospitals in the province. Despite the passage of a week, the staff of Peshawar’s major hospital, Lady Reading, is still waiting for salaries, while the management does not have funds for medicines and other operations.

The provincial government has not released the funds for September, October and November due to which the affairs of the hospital are badly affected. The State Life Corporation also did not pay the arrears of three and a half billion rupees to LRH.

When contacted, the Chief Executive Officer of LRH, Professor Dr Junaid Sarfraz Khan, said the government is in the process of releasing funds to various MTIs, including LRH, next week. He was optimistic about releasing the salaries of staff next week as soon as the funds were received.

Mahmood Aslam, Secretary of Health, told this correspondent that the health department has already requested the finance department to release the funds. “The funds requirements of all the hospitals have been sent to finance department. As soon as funds are received, they will be sent to hospitals,” he said.

However, the secretary said the province is facing difficulties in receiving funds from the federal government.

Some of the doctors of the Lady Reading Hospital told The News that the provincial government used to provide the annual budget to the hospital under which funds were released. But the government first decided to release the funds quarterly and then decided to release funds every month. However, the funds for September, October and November were not released. Due to this, the hospital has run out of funds. “Due to shortage of funds, all sections and operations are affected, patients are suffering and they have to buy medicines and other items from the market”, they said.

They said the cash crunch has hit thousands of employees, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others, and thus, threatened the patient care at the hospital. The MTI LRH has around four thousand employees and requires around Rs320 million a month to pay salaries to staff members.

They said the hospital has not received the arrears of three and a half billion rupees from the State Life Corporation. Sources told this correspondent that the State Life Insurance Company has stopped the payment of claims to public sector hospitals under the Sehat Card due to shortage of funds.