PESHAWAR: The Medical Teaching Institutions (MTI) Appellate Tribunal of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has sought a list of non-faculty teaching staff receiving monthly Health Professional Allowance (HPA) from Khyber Medical College, Peshawar, within fortnight.
The tribunal also summoned the representatives from the health and finance departments as amici curiae to assist the tribunal in determining whether the payment of HPA to non-faculty members was correct or not.
Presided over by the KP MTI Appellate Tribunal Chairman Justice (r) Abdul Shakoor and Member Mansoor Tariq, the list was sought during a hearing of an appeal filed by Dr Muhammad Zahid.
The petitioner’s lawyer, Nazar Ahmad informed the tribunal that his client Dr Muhammad Zahid was an associate professor of biochemistry and a faculty member at KMC MTI, Peshawar.
Like other doctors, he had been receiving the monthly HPA as per the Finance Department’s 2011 notification. However, he pleaded that in 2021, the payment of this allowance was stopped. Despite submitting several applications to the relevant authorities, no response was received, thus he filed an appeal with the MTI Tribunal.
After arguments, the tribunal noted that during the hearing, it came to light that several doctors at the mentioned MTI, who were non-teaching faculty, were also receiving the HPA, although this allowance was meant only for medical teaching
faculty.
The tribunal instructed KMC to provide a list of these doctors within two weeks, who were not teaching faculty members but were still receiving the monthly HPA, in order to clarify whether the Health Department’s decision to stop the petitioner’s HPA was correct or not. The tribunal also issued notices to the finance and health departments to clarify how non-faculty doctors were being given the HPA.
The case was adjourned until February 3.
Secretaries Health, Finance, Chairman of the Board of Governors of KMC, the Dean of KMC, and others have been parties to the case.
According to sources, non-teaching faculty members have so far received millions of rupees as HPA.
