Children suffer as unpaid govt hospital staff boycott duties

Hundreds of parents were compelled to take their sick children to private hospitals and clinics on Thursday after doctors, paramedics and employees of Sindh Government Children Hospital in North Nazimabad boycotted health services in protest against the non-payment of their salaries of the last several months and vowed to keep the facility closed until their dues were paid.

The hospital has been renovated by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and later the Sindh government handed it over to an Islamabad-based NGO, Poverty Eradication Initiative (PEI), which has been running the facility for the last couple of years.

The Out-Patient Department and several other departments at the hospital remained closed on Thursday due to the protest by the staff, who locked up the departments and reached Karachi Press Club to lodge their protest against the non-payment of their salaries.

Issues started surfacing in the functioning of the hospital after the Sindh health department stopped funding to the PEI, which is running the hospital through privately hired doctors, paramedics and other staffers after the health department accused the NGO of misappropriation of funds and warned that unless a justification for the usage of the previous funds was provided, more funds would not be released.

But protesters said they had nothing to do with the financial tussle between the government and the NGO and would not see patients unless they were given their dues. They chanted slogans against the government and their own employer, i.e. PEI, and vowed to continue their protest.

Chief Financial Officer PEI Ahmed Rashid said that owing to some objections raised by the government to an internal audit, the government had stopped giving funds to the hospital and a result they were not only unable to run the hospital amicably but were also unable to pay the salaries to the staff.

“As soon as our issue with the provincial government is settled, the salaries to the staff would be paid,” Rashid said. However, the protesting employees rejected his explanation and chanted slogans against the PEI and the hospital management.