Cardiac centre employees to be regularised

Senate panel, SZABMU syndicate direct to release their pending salaries as soon as possible

ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel and the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University in Islamabad have recommended regularising nine staffers of the cardiac centre who have been working at the centre for over two-and-a-half-years after their contracts had expired.

The Senate Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, which met on Wednesday, directed the concerned departments to complete the regularisation process — initiated on orders from the Islamabad High Court — within 15 days.

The employees have been working without salaries since June 30, 2015, when their contracts expired. Taking note of this, the committee also directed to release their salaries as soon as possible.

When the matter was brought up on Wednesday, the committee members expressed their annoyance and asked why doctors and other staffers were not being regularised at the centre despite the fact that they have been treating patients there since 2005. Moreover, repeated directions by the committee to regularise these staffers too had been ignored.

Capital Administration and Development Division Secretary Nargis Ghaloo told the committee that on the instructions of the IHC, a joint committee headed by the finance secretary had been formed for the regularisation of these staffers. This committee, she said, met once where it had, in principle, decided to regularise the staffers.

Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Javed Akram said the centre at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) had been delayed for years and its Project Concept-I had ended.  The centre had hired around 38 employees of different cadres when it started work around 12 years ago.

Later, some employees left due to the ineffective response of the government.

In 2016, the regularisation committee of the government regularised services of around 22 employees of basic pay scale grade-15 and lower, but the committee bypassed the nine employees who were in a higher grade, nor were their contracts renewed.

These employees – including three nurses, three medical officers, one cardiac surgeon, one interventional cardiologist and a perfusionist – will be regularised soon, Dr Akram told the committee.

Senators Talha Mahmood and Kalsoom Parveen cried that the issue of these employees has appeared repeatedly in the media and discussed at various forums, but the Prime Minister Secretariat was not bothered to take action. Rather, it was quick to recommend their expulsion from the centre after reports of private practices at the centre emerged.

The CADD secretary said they have told the PM Secretariat that they cannot proceed against these employees since the matter is subjudice and that the IHC has forbidden them to take adverse action against these officials.

While the cardiologist and surgeons are getting on handsomely owing to their private practice, both at Pims and at private hospitals, it is the nurses who suffer the most.

The SZABMU vice chancellor further told the committee that doctors are allowed to continue their private practice and the money goes into the Pims account from where employees get a percentage of the fees.

Separately, the apex decision making the body of the SZABMU – syndicate — met to discuss various issues and ruled in favour of regularising the centre’s employees.

Harassment case

During the syndicate and the parliamentary panel’s meeting, a case of harassment at the centre was also discussed.

The cardiac surgeon, accused of molesting and sexually harassing a junior doctor, had been suspended from the hospital last month.

The surgeon subsequently approached the court against the decision but the court has yet to issue its verdict on the maintainability of the case.

The syndicate on Wednesday, however, approved the surgeon’s suspension. However, deferred a decision on terminating him from the hospital.

The body is expected to take up the matter again on December 6 after reviewing the rules in the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2017.