Doctors denied long-overdue promotions

PESHAWAR: Indecisiveness of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department to name Board of Governors (BoGs) in time for the public sector hospitals and then incompetence of the respective hospital authorities has delayed the long awaited promotions of senior and junior doctors that is adversely affecting patients and training of the trainee doctors at these heath facilities.
It is believed that doctors lacking strong political backup would always suffer and would not get even due promotion in time. Some of the doctors had managed to get due promotions during the last tenure of the Institution Management Councils (IMCs) after they successfully pleaded own cases.
However, those who concentrated on the patient care but did not have the powerful links in the political leadership as well in bureaucracy suffered and are yet to be promoted. Only at the Paediatric Department of Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) in the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC, four positions of professors, and some positions of associate professors, assistant professors, senior registrars and junior registrars have been lying vacant for the past over an one year.
“There is extreme frustration among the doctors as they have been working against the same position for the past seven and eight years. Denying them their right of promotion in time has caused depression to some of the sensitive doctors,” a senior physician at the LRH told The News.
He said there are four paediatric wards at the PGMI and three positions of professors had been lying vacant due to lack of interest of the hospital administration as well as of the Health Department.
Prof Dr Azmat Talat retired in January 2015 at the HMC but his position is yet to be filled out. Interestingly, the professor retired from service while associate professor in the same ward was suspended last year by an inquiry committee constituted to investigate deaths caused during the ill-planned anti-measles campaign.
Similarly in Paediatric A ward in LRH, Prof Dr Habibur Rahman Orakzai retired from service in October 2014 but the hospital administration failed to replace him. Keeping in view the increasing number of children suffering from multiple diseases in the LRH, the government in June 2014, sanctioned additional ward, Paediatric C, to better cope the with the situation.
However, the Health Department and the LRH administration failed to advertise and fill out positions of professor, associate professor, assistant professor, senior registrar and junior registrar as well as other supportive staff for the new unit. Associate Prof Dr Musa Kalim is presently working there and has made the unit operational.
In Paediatric A, head of the ward, Prof Dr Asmat Ara suffered stroke and is now coming to the hospital on wheelchair. She is due to retire next month but the post of associate professor has been lying vacant for past few years in the ward. The government has no plan to run the unit after she retires from service.
“The previous IMC was supposed to approve and fill out these vacant positions but the then hospital administration didn’t advertise these and several other vacant posts in the hospital,” a faculty member at the LRH told The News.
Some of the doctors, particularly at the Neurosurgery Department, had gone even to the court and challenged it at the Peshawar High Court. They even nominated the previous hospital chief executive by name in their writ petition for allegedly depriving them of right to promotion in time.
First promotions of these doctors were delayed due to infrequent meetings of the IMC. These were further delayed when the IMCs were dissolved after the passage of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institution Reforms Act.
The provincial assembly had passed the act in January but it was failure of the government and Health Department to appoint BoGs for these hospitals.Now that BoGs have finally been announced, one doesn’t know when these BoGs would convene meetings to take up the long-delayed promotions of doctors at LRH, HMC, KTH and other teaching hospitals of the province.