Two dozen PIMS doctors denied promotion

Islamabad :Over two dozen young doctors of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) have complained about the denial of due promotion by the national health services ministry.

According to them, around 50 BPS-17 doctors of PIMS, the city’s largest government hospital, awaited promotion for eight years but the ministry’s departmental promotion committee recently recommended only 23 of them for getting promoted to BPS-18, distressing the rest.

The ministry insists that the promotion was granted to only those doctors, who were recruited through the Federal Public Service Commission, an autonomous organisation tasked with recruiting employees for federal government departments in the posts of BPS-16 and above.

The doctors denied promotion, who total around 30, are either former temps, whose services were regularised in June 2011 on the orders of the then premier, Yousaf Raza Gilani, as recommended by a cabinet committee led by senior minister Syed Khursheed Shah, those absorbed in PIMS after transfer from the federal government’s other medical institutions and population department, or deputationists from other provinces.

Among them are senior registrars, an assistant dental surgeon and medical officers. Some of them have been working in the hospital for over 15 years.

Complaining about discrimination by the ministry, which oversees Islamabad’s government hospitals in the post-devolution regime, those doctors insisted that the Islamabad High Court had ruled in 2017 that the jobs of all those employees, who were regularised by the government through the Khursheed Shah-led cabinet panel but didn’t get the ‘joining’ orders due to recruitment ban, would be considered to be permanent from the issuance of joining orders.

They added that the high court had also asked the relevant ministries and divisions to issue posting orders for such employees within 90 days after the fulfilment of codal formalities.

The doctors said since the court as well as parliament had endorsed their appointments, the health ministry’s act of denying them promotion was a contempt of court.

They warned that besides agitating, they would also move the court to claim ‘right’.

Some of them insisted that the health ministry had targeted them for resisting the so-called PIMS reforms legislation, which threatened their employment as well as patient care.

The doctors also claimed that around 40 medical officers of the Federal Government Polyclinic, the city's second largest government hospital, had also been denied the due promotion by the ministry.

A senior health ministry official 'The News' spoke to insisted that the Khursheed Shah committee was tasked with recommending the regularisation of only those hospital employees, who worked in grades from 1 to 15, but it overstepped mandate by suggesting permanent jobs for the temps working in grades BPS-17 to 20 as well.

He said the DPC would examine the doctor promotion cases in its next meeting slated for November 11.