Pressure from senior HMC doctors: BoG unable to fill positions, promote juniors

PESHAWAR: The Board of Governors (BoG) of Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) would complete its three-year term in April but it has neither announced positions of chairpersons for different departments nor promoted faculty members apparently due to strong influence of senior doctors.

According to the faculty members, influential professors who are also heads of their respective departments had developed connections with some of the BoG members and persuaded them not to advertise positions of chairpersons of their departments in the hospital.

“Unlike the Lady Reading Hospital and Khyber Teaching Hospital, the BoG in HMC didn’t advertise positions of chairpersons of departments. The main reason is influence of dominant professors in the hospitals. They are against health reforms as they fear losing their offices if the BoG advertises the positions,” said a faculty member.

Pleading anonymity, he said that only two positions of the chairpersons, i.e. medical and allied departments and surgical and allied departments were advertised as per new rules and regulations of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical and Teaching Institution Reforms Act 2015.

Following the procedure, Prof Dr Mumtaz Marwat was appointed chairman of medical and allied departments and Prof Dr Zahid Aman was made chairman of surgical and allied departments.

“As per MTI Act 2015, the positions of chairpersons of all the departments are required to be advertised and the chairperson is selected for three years on rotation basis. But in HMC, the professors used their connections and managed to stop these positions from being advertised. And all this happened in the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led government,” remarked the faculty member.

Also, the faculty members complained that professors had stopped the long overdue promotions of junior doctors.

“Everybody knows that junior doctors, including trainee medical officers, as well as senior registrars, assistant professors and associate professors are providing services to the patients. But when it comes to their promotion, the professors deprive them of their due right,” said a physician serving on the same position for the past eight years.

According to the faculty members, strong argument of these professors to the BoG against promotions of their junior doctors is that they would lose their importance and would face competitors in case the juniors were promoted.

“Actually the senior doctors and professors are against health reforms and they are telling their blue-eyed people in the BoG to delay it for three months as the system is going to be rolled back,” said an affected doctor.

According to sources, Chairman BoG Sahibzada Mohammad Saeed was in favour of promotions and advertising positions but he was helpless after some other influential members of the board didn’t agree with him.

When reached for comments, Sahibzada Mohammad Saeed told The News that they had advertised all the positions of chairpersons and people were selected on merit.

He said they wanted to promote the doctors whose promotions had been due for years but some of the senior doctors didn’t support the promotion criteria.

However, Khyber Girls Medical College Dean Dr Noor Wazir confirmed that some of the professors with the backing of the BoG members stopped him from advertising the positions.

“Well, I agree with what most of the faculty members are saying as I was in favour of advertising the positions of chairpersons and promoting the doctors as per new rules. But some of the BoG members have stopped us from doing so,” he said.