Health ministry stops hiring at PIMS

Letter sent to FPSC to freeze recruitment process of 80 faculty members

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSRC) has stopped the process for the recruitment of 80 faculty members in Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).

According to the available documents, the federal ministry sent a letter to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) on April 30 to stop the recruitment process of 80 faculty members varying from Basic Pay Scale (BPS) 17 to 20 immediately.

The commission had started conducting interviews of candidates for vacant posts of four BPS-20 professors, seven BPS-19 associate professors, 29 BPS-18 assistant professors, 24 BPS-18 senior registrars, a senior librarian of BPS-18 and 15 principal technicians of BPS-17.

Sources said that the recruitment was possibly halted because Pims was being given under the board of governors as proposed in Medical Teaching Institution (MTI) Act. Hiring will be made after the administrative change, they said. However, on the other side, the ministry has issued orders to permanently appoint around 290 medical officers in PIMS.

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Though there are talks of hiring fresh hands, some 40 officials, including nine doctors and 31 technical and non-technical employees of PIMS cardiac care center are seeking regularization of their services since last 14 years. These people were hired on contract in 2005.

Their issue has been raised in various meetings of National Assembly and Senate. The doctors have been deprived of their salaries since the project was completed in 2015.

However, the hospital administration instructed them to continue working, instead of sacking them, and assured them they would be adjusted at the same workplace. Later, the technical and non-technical staff up to BPS-15 was regularized but the doctors above BPS-17 were completely ignored.

The same doctors then used legal channels owing to which the ministry of Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) decided to issue outstanding salaries of 33 months on orders of apex court last year while the court ordered an extension in their contracts effected from 1st July 2015 to 31st December 2018 until new recruitments were not done.

The doctors seeking regularization include BPS-18 Dr Akhtar Ali, BPS-17 Dr Mahrukh Zahoor, Dr Mohammad Rafique, Dr Mohammad Faisal, Dr Javed Iqbal as well as BPS-16 charge nurses including Aqleema Manan, Fouzia Jabeen and Sabeeha Aslam.

Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat during it meeting held under the chairmanship of Senator Talha Mehmood on May 6, had invited Dr Mohammad Faisal to hear the issue of doctors at Pims cardiac care centre.

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Dr Faisal told the committee that they had been hired on contract when the cardiac project began. He added that they had been promised regular, permanent jobs when the project was completed.  However, this did not happen.

He added that it was a similar case with employees of the bone marrow centre, who, despite having a complete service record have yet to be regularised.

Dr Faisal went on to say that during the course of the project, they were given two years of cardiac training. He added that his colleagues, including Dr Shahid Nawaz Malik, were regularized in 2013, but they were being discriminated against.

He continued that the health ministry and Pims had given them written assurances in 2015 to permit them to work after directions from a court. Moreover, he paid tribute to the Pims executive director who told the court that the centre could not run without the contractual staffers. He added that even the apex court had ordered that the cardiac centre must not shut down at any cost.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2019.