PIMS gets go-ahead for appointments

Islamabad: After being given the green light by the government, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), the capital city’s premier yet badly-understaffed government hospital, will soon get hundreds of more staff members in grade 17 and above.

The president has sanctioned the creation of 322 positions, including 51 assistant professors, 61 senior registrars and 210 medical officers, in Islamabad Hospital, Children’s Hospital, Mother-Child Health Care Centre, Burns Centre, Cardiac Centre and Liver Transplant Centre, all parts of the PIMS.

The development comes at the fag-end of the current government’s five-year term. In all, PIMS has 3,824 sanctioned posts but 1,011 of them have long been lying vacant and thus, thus, adversely impacting on administrative affairs and patient care.

Of the vacancies, 630 are of grade 16-20, 105 of grade 6-15 and 276 of grade 1-5. Half of them will be filled through the Federal Public Service Commission and the rest through promotion and the entire process is likely to take three to four months to compete.

According to an insider, the PIMS had begun operation in 1985 with 600 beds and 142 posts of medical officers. Though its bedding capacity has come to around 1,300, the number of medical officers has come down to around 20 as most of these officials got promotion after passing the FCPC and MCPS exams and assumed new posts but their previous department didn’t get their replacements. As a result, patient care was seriously compromised as the medical officers were to attend to 200 patients each daily.

He said recently the PIMS chief, who had assumed the charge few months ago, formally informed the bosses of the Capital Administration and Development Division, which oversaw the hospital, about the fears that if new recruitment wasn’t made immediately, there would be no medical officer, and called for the immediate appointment of 210 medical officers.

Many of the medical officers have long been denied posting as assistant professors despite having FCPC qualifications.

When contacted, PIMS executive director Dr Raja Amjad Mehmood confirmed the sanction of the posts and said their early filling would ease the hospital’s workload and specialties and components, especially after the day-and-night functioning of the cardiac and bone marrow transplant centres on the Supreme Court’s orders, and opening of the cardiac centre’s emergency. He said most of the staff members were appointed in late 80s and neared the age of retirement and therefore, there were ‘visible compromise’ in their performance due to old age.

“Under these circumstances, it has become imperative to go ahead with the plans to make appointments to the posts on emergency basis to help improve care for the visitors, whose numbers are ever-increasing,” he said. Dr Raja Amjad said the Election Commission of Pakistan’s pre-election recruitment ban didn’t go against the creation of posts. “The ECP restriction is about new appointments and not creation of posts,” he said adding that the newly-sanctioned positions would be filled in strict compliance with the law.