Fired for negligence: Religious support staff hurdling polio drives

Claim BHU staff ask parents to turn away vaccinators

PESHAWAR: Some religious support personnel, who were hired by a global body to convince the public to allow polio vaccines to be administered to their children but then terminated for being “unaware of basic religious knowledge”, have resorted to creating hurdles in the implementation of vaccination drives.

Some of these personnel, though, claim that it was their supervisors who were sabotaging the drives adding that if refusal cases went up again, they would be hired again.

To convince people that polio vaccination was in line with religious teachings, and to counter misinformation against anti-polio campaigns, the least 900 religious support persons (RSPs), including 62 scholars, had been hired from across the country by the World Health Organisation (WHO) three years ago. Of these 535 were from district Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and 125 were from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

The 840 RSPs were each paid Rs10,000 a month while the 62 scholars were paid Rs25,000 per month.

Donors spent around Rs253 million in countering propaganda against polio immunisation drives, handing hefty sums to RSPs and religious scholars. The international community has been focusing on the last two polio endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Donor agencies have spent Rs2.4 billion to rid Pakistan and Afghanistan of the virus until 2016.



The RSPs had been randomly selected from across the country though many were inducted on references. However, some were later turned away after it emerged that they did not meet the required criteria and were “unaware of religious knowledge”.

However, this angered some RSPs who had recommended these people. They started pressuring their immediate bosses, warning them that if they did not reinstate the rejected RSPs, they would have to face consequences. In some instances, death threats were given.

While the WHO fired a large number of RSPs across the country, 19 from Peshawar where sent home.



Some left silently since they knew they were hired following ‘strong recommendations’. Others refused to comply.

Having spent millions of rupees to finance the RSPs, some disgruntled RSPs who were previously recruited and now terminated, are now creating hurdles in the drive against poliovirus.

Some of these disgruntled RSPs allege that officials involved in the polio eradication programme actually wanted ‘more and more refusal cases’ and were an impediment to the success of the drive.

“I was part of the programme for around two years. But one day, I was told that my services had been terminated on charges of fake figure marking,” a 70-year-old RSP Ghulam Sarwar told The Express Tribune.



“When I pleaded my innocence explaining that I had nothing to do with figure marking, I was asked to tell people to refuse vaccination (the antithesis of my work) and then, he [the in-charge] will request that I should be hired again,” Sarwar went on to claim.

Sarwar’s claims were backed by Fazl-e-Hadi, a staffer at a Basic Health Unit (BHU) in Pishtakhara.

Hadi recalled how he and Sarwar were terminated over allegations of fake figure marking, adding that the BHU staff had asked the two former RSPs to tell people that they should refuse polio drops.

“They [BHU] staff members told us to turn parents away and ask them to refuse polio workers,” Hadi told The Express Tribune, adding, ”We were told that if refusal cases increase, they will recruit us again.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2018.