Sindh allocates Rs15.75bn to run Karachi’s three hospitals

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that his government in the new provincial budget has allocated Rs15.75 billion for running three major public sector hospitals of Karachi after the federal government reserved no money for these health facilities in the upcoming financial year despite having assumed their control.

Speaking at the post-budget press conference here on Saturday, he said that though the federal government had issued a notification last month to assume the control of the three major public sector hospitals in Karachi in pursuance of the court directives, later no one from the Centre approached the Sindh government as a follow-up to this notification.

He said that the Sindh government had allocated ample funds in the budget for the fiscal year 2019-20 to run Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases and the National Institute of Child Health to run and manage them in the best of the manner, something it had been doing for the last some years since the devolution of these facilities to Sindh.

Shah said that the federal government had no inclination or intention to formally take over and run these public sector hospitals of Karachi.

“I keep on asking the chief secretary, secretary of the health department, and the Sindh health minister about any move made by the federal government to take over these hospitals to run them in pursuance of its notification, but their response is always in no,” he said.