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Friday March 29, 2024

Health diary: Time to purge KTH of land grabbers

By Mushtaq Yusufzai
January 08, 2021

PESHAWAR: The ball is now in the court of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and Peshawar High Court (PHC) whether to let the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) remain hostage in clutches of qabza mafias or become in realty a state-of-the-art hospital.

For the first time in recent history of the hospital, its administration headed by Prof Roohul Muqeem and Prof Mahmood Aurangzeb challenged the hold of certain mafias to retrieve the hospital’s precious land. The value of the property secured four days ago is stated to be several million rupees.

Prof Roohul Muqeem is the hospital director while Prof Mahmood Aurangzeb is dean of the Khyber Medical College (KMC). Both are well-known surgeons.

Former PTI MNA from Peshawar Engineer Hamidul Haq, who belongs to Peshawar’s Tehkal locality, is the only one stands behind Prof Roohul Muqeem and Prof Mahmood Aurangzeb in their campaign for the revival of the KTH. The qabza mafia are being supported by certain powerful elements within and outside the hospital.

It is widely believed that if the health reforms of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had damaged any institution, it is KTH. Since 2015 after KTH was declared as medical teaching institution (MTI) following the promulgation of the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act 2015, the hospital was handed over to a Board of Governors (BoG). The BoG advertised certain positions and completed the selection process.

The government in 2015 gave Rs700 million for the hospital’s renovation and an additional amount of Rs500 million for replacement of an outdated air-conditioning plant.

Neither the renovation work was completed nor the faulty air-conditioning plant was replaced. Some of the BoG members had come with their personal agenda to serve their interest.

Somehow they succeeded in their mission and brought a Lahore-based consultancy firm and awarded it the contract. The renovation started in 2015 and the hospital was turned into rubble and dust and there seemed no end to the suffering of staff and patients. People then started making fun of it by referring to KTH as another BRT.

A former BoG member is alleged to have intentionally delayed the renovation work. He would tell his colleagues and faculty members that he would become the finance minister in the next PTI government and help bring more funds for the hospital. He was denied the party ticket to contest the election and was also removed from the BoG when the new PTI government was installed in 2018.

In these long years, nobody dared to ask what is going on in the hospital and why the renovation work is being delayed, apparently due to political interference and weak management of the previous BoG. During this period, the hospital suffered huge losses in various sections.

There was no one to stop qabza mafias from occupying the hospital land. Others kept encroaching on the property.

The recent incident of oxygen gas shortage that caused the death of six Covid-19 patients had no doubt brought a bad name to the institution but it prompted the government and the BoG to fire certain people holding key positions. The BoG, now headed by Prof Nadeem Khawar, offered Prof Roohul Muqeem to become acting hospital director but he refused as he had a bitter experience of serving the KTH as its first regular medical director. However, Dean KMC Prof Mahmood Aurangzeb convinced him to accept the offer and assured him of his full support.

Both drafted their strategic plan and shared it with the BoG, which gave a green signal. The first thing they did was to cancel the contract with the Lahore consultancy firm and warned the contractor that his contract will be cancelled if he didn’t accelerate work in three days.

The contractor took the warning seriously and within a few days increased his workforce four times.

The hospital was built in the 1970s and none of the hospital administrators bothered to make full use of its vast basement. They had secured and utilised 100,000 square feet space in the basement and constructed 92 rooms for the out-patients’ department, laboratory and procedure rooms and many other services.

The present administration has given one and a half months’ time to the contractor to hand over space in the basement so that they can shift all their OPDs, laboratory and other additional facilities there. The contractor will deliver the basement to the administration next month, which will double the hospital space.

There are three entrances to the basement but an important entrance is yet to be provided as a private canteen owner has constantly been refusing to leave the area.

According to officials, the canteen owner has stopped paying rent or utility bills to the hospital and has sublet the space to other contractors. He had occupied four prime locations and approached the court to continue occupying the space through stay orders.

“The canteen owner is using our space, gas and electricity and is earning Rs13,000 daily just from one place. We are helpless to remove him because he goes to the court and gets a stay order,” said an official of the hospital administration.

He said the canteen owner even cooked food in the hospital and supplied it to other hotels in the city. The hospital administration took another bold decision by retrieving three kanal prime land from qabza mafias in two corners of the hospital. Its value is stated to be several millions of rupees. The rooms and a public call office established close to the accident and emergency department have been demolished.

“Without the support of the government and judiciary, we would not be able to fight these elements as they are very powerful and backed by influential people,” said the official.