‘Govt doctors cannot conduct foreign sponsored visits’

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly was told on Monday that as per government policy, doctors of the state-run hospitals cannot conduct foreign visits sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

Special Assistant to Chief Minister on Information and Higher Education Kamran Bangash, while replying to a question by Shagufta Malik about the doctors’ foreign visits sponsored by private medicines companies, said the government had a clear policy, which did not allow government hospitals’ doctors to avail such sponsored visits.

However, he said there were no restrictions on doctors’ private visits as every government officer can avail a certain number of vacations. He said the Health Department had in its reply clarified that no doctor from Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar (LRH) availed visits sponsored by medicine companies.

Shagufta Malik of the Awami National Party said medicines companies were arranging VVIP foreign visits for certain doctors and after return, the doctors were given a target of prescribing medicines.

She said there were doctors, who availed the visits on monthly basis, and this practice had badly affected the poor patients. The government is either uninformed of the situation or it has a dual policy, she said, insisting that the question should be referred to the committee concerned.

Kamran Bangash said the answer was clear that no doctor from the public sector hospital mentioned in the question had availed any such visit but he would have no objection if the mover insisted on referring the matter to the committee. Speaker Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani referred the question to the committee concerned for discussion. The House admitted for discussion the call attention notice by Ikhtiar Wali Khan of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) regarding the protection of coalminers.

In his notice, the mover said that a large number of poor people from Shangla and other districts in the Malakand division were working in mines, particularly coalmines without any safety checks.

The miners are exploited by influential mine owners and are often unpaid, he added. He said the miners should be registered with the Employees Old-Age Benefits Institute (EOBI) so that they could avail pension facility at the old age and the families of those losing life in an incident could be provided compensation from Workers Welfare Board (WWB) funds.

The legislator said the WWB had huge funds amounting to billions of rupees and mine workers should be provided relief from this fund in case of getting injured and death compensation to the victim families. The government should enact laws for the protection and security of mines workers, he added. Arif Ahmadzai said inspectors were authorised to visit the mines in their respective districts.