LRH official attacked on University Road

PESHAWAR: Amid strike of doctors and other health workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a group of armed men attempted to take the life of a senior administrative officer of the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) Peshawar, but the assailants escaped when the guard of the official opened fire in self-defence, officials said on Friday.

It was learnt that Dr Tariq Burki’s car was intercepted on the University Road on Thursday night by armed men who hit him on the head, chest and face, but they had to escape when his guard opened fire.

Dr Tariq Burki, Associate Hospital Director LRH, was going home when he was attacked by 10 to 12 people. And a day earlier, according to officials of the LRH, unidentified people had gathered outside the houses of two other senior LRH officials on Wednesday night and tried to harass them.

Dr Tariq Burki told The News that he was returning home along with security guard when “around 10-12” people in three to four car chased them on the University Road.

“I noticed one car that followed us and the remaining three cars and a taxi were ahead of our car. One car intercepted us and we were forced to stop near a store. As soon as we stopped, 10-12 people started running towards us from the other cars. I saw two of them had pistols but they began beating me. They hit me in head, chest and arm and also thrashed my security guard,” he recalled.

Dr Tariq Burki said he and his security guard suffered injuries but the guard managed to fire warning shots into the air in self-defence. It frightened the attackers who fled in their cars. He said they later got footage from the CCTV camera of the store and saw all the assailants.

“They looked like doctors but I couldn’t name them. The only one I recognised was DrAmjad Ali. We went to the Town Police Station and lodged FIR against DrAmjad Ali and his colleagues,” said Dr Tariq Burki.

He and his security guard were later taken to the LRH and provided emergency cover. According to the LRH administration, around three dozen people had earlier gathered outside the houses of two other senior officials during the night and misbehaved with their family members.

“They went there with bad intentions and thought the officials themselves would come out and they would beat them up. They used indecent language against the senior officials near their houses and remained there for quite some time,” an official of the hospital said.

He said that some senior doctors were allegedly using the junior doctors and trainees for their vested interests and the young doctors believed as if they were fighting for rights of their community.

“All those senior doctors who are using these young and emotional doctors have not even closed their private clinics for a single day. They even attend OPDs to avoid disciplinary action against them but these young doctors don’t understand this dirty game,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the protesting doctors, paramedics and nursing staff continued to protest on the 22nd day on Friday. All the health workers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been on strike since September 27 and paralysed health services in all the public sector hospitals of the province. They started protest against the new legislation of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government in the health sector the Regional Health Authority and District Health Authority.

The government claimed that under the act, it wanted to give administrative and financial autonomy to the hospitals at regional and district level. The protesting doctors and other health workers stopped attending patients in the outpatient departments and operation theatres.

They also stopped providing services to patients in the radiology and pathology departments across the province. This longest ever protest of the doctors in KP flourished businesses of the private medical sector. Private hospitals in the city and Hayatabad are being flooded with patients daily.

Sources said that the doctors of one major private hospital in Hayatabad had raised their rates and consultation fee after the doctors in the public sector hospitals went on strike.

In the government-run hospitals, most of the patients admitted for surgical procedures have returned home when they came to know that the strike could prolong.

Most of the doctors and particularly surgeons of the public sector hospitals can be seen in their private clinics and medical and surgical centres during duty time.