Court happy with plan to regularise doctors

17-year-old plea filed by contract doctors finally disposed of.

LAHORE:

Justice Umar Ata Bandial of the Lahore High Court has directed the Punjab government to regularise contractual doctors in accordance with a summary forwarded by the Health Department to the chief minister.

With this, the judge disposed of a petition filed by several doctors working for the last 17 years on contract basis.

According to the summary submitted before the court, the chief minister has approved a proposal to create 198 posts so that up to 80 assistant professors and 90 senior medical officers who could not be regularised in 2009 could now get permanent jobs. The cases of another 79 associate professors and professors working on contract were being sent to the Punjab Services Commission for regularisation in the Health Department, the summary added.

The PPSC will interview these doctors and not consider new candidates, said the summary. The Heath Department has also set up a committee to decide the individual seniority of more than 6,000 doctors who have been regularised since 2009. Guidelines have been formulated for this purpose, it said.

The Health Department counsel said that in future, 50 percent of assistant professor seats would be filled by senior registrars. This would allow doctors in the non-teaching cadre to join the teaching cadre in the Health Department, he said.

The judge praised the Punjab government for resolving the long standing issue of regularisation of doctors and told the petitioner to file a rejoinder if they had any objection.

The Pakistan Medical Association in a press release issued on Wednesday welcomed the development as “historic” and congratulated the 1,800 doctors likely to benefit from it. It said it had been fighting for the regularisation of these doctors for 13 years. It also thanked the chief minister and health secretary.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2011.