Administrative tug-of-war: SHC reserves verdict on devolution of three public hospitals

After 18th Amendment, Jinnah hospital, NICH and NICVD were to be devolved to Sindh govt

KARACHI: Sindh High Court (SHC) reserved on Monday its verdict on identical petitions challenging the devolution of city's three major public hospitals under the 18th constitutional amendment.

The bench, headed by Justice Ahmed Ali M Sheikh and comprising justices Munib Akhtar and Muhammad Ali Mazhar, reserved its verdict on eight identical petitions that challenged transferring the administrative control of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC), National Institute of Child Health (NICH) and National Institute of Cardio Vascular Disease (NICVD) from federal to provincial government. The petitions were filed by the JPMC joint executive director, Prof Nadeem Rizvi and others in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

After the 18th Amendment was passed, the three major public health facilities in the country's largest city were supposed to be devolved from the federal to the provincial government.

However, the devolution never occured as JPMC senior officers, including Dr Jamali and Dr Rizvi, took the matter up in the SHC, which granted a stay against the handing over administrative control of the three health facilities to the province.

These hospitals are institutes of higher education and research catering to 300,000 federal government employees, according to the lawyer, Anwar Mansoor Khan, who represented the hospitals' management.

In the plea, it was argued that the government officers are treated for free at these institutions. But, if these hospitals are handed over to Sindh, these government servants will have to seek reimbursement from the federal government.

According to Khan, JPMC was established in 1930 as an 80-bed hospital meant for the treatment of the armed forces. But, it rose to become a centre of excellence for research and training in specialised fields of medicine.

The provincial government led by the Pakistan Peoples Party, which claimed to have granted autonomy to provinces by devolving various federal subjects to the provinces through 18th Amendment, defended the decision.

It claimed that since the 18th Amendment was passed, the petitions filed by the JPMC officers had become infructuous, as the same lacked merits to make out a case for hearing them and passing any order in their favour.

During Monday's proceedings, the full bench heard final arguments from the lawyers representing the petitioners, the provincial and federal governments. Later, the bench reserved its order to be announced later.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2016.