Said Mitha Hospital: ‘PML-N workers hired as staff not working’

MPA says appointments made on merit, no politics involved.

LAHORE:

Some 60 employees at the Government Said Mitha Hospital, whose inauguration was again delayed because of rain on Friday, are political appointees who never show up for work, hospital officials told The Express Tribune.

“There are some 200 low-scale employees (BPS-1 to BPS-6) and at least 60 of them never show up or do any work, though they do draw salaries. They have been recruited on political grounds,” said an official of the hospital who didn’t want to be named.

The official said whenever the group of 60 was asked to do any work, they staged protests against the hospital administration.

The man said to be the leader of this group of employees, Hasan, was booked in a case on Friday under Sections 399 (preparing to commit a dacoity) and 402 (assembling for the purpose of committing a dacoity) of the Pakistan Penal Code at Gulshan-i-Ravi police station.

Hasan, a contractual employee at the hospital for the last year, was arrested and later released on interim bail.

Said Mitha Hospital Medical Superintendent Dr Abid Karim confirmed Hasan was an employee of the hospital. Asked about the dacoity case, he replied, “I’ve heard about it. He has not been coming to the job for several days.”

Asked why 60 employees at the hospital never showed up for work, he said he didn’t know about that. “I took charge here two months ago. All of them were hired before I joined. But I can confirm that their files are all complete,” he said.

Executive District Officer (Health) Dr Umar Farooq said he didn’t know anything about the dacoity case or the attendance records of workers at the hospital. “I will look into this myself,” he said.

The hospital falls in the constituency of PML-N MPA Khwaja Salman Rafique. He said that the recruitments at the hospital were made purely on merit.

“If there are people who don’t come to the job or are forming cliques, the administration should take action against them. The recruitments were done by the Health Department along with the hospital committee. No politics was involved,” he said.

Another PML-N official said he was looking into the dacoity case against Hasan. “Police says he was involved in a dacoity but the locals are not ready to believe this. Maybe he has been framed. I am trying to resolve the matter,” he said.

PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif was scheduled to inaugurate the hospital on Friday, but the programme was cancelled because of the rain. The 100-bed hospital has two emergency theatres, a labour room, a chemical laboratory and CT scanner. The newly purchased scanner is said to be the most advanced in the city and only the second of its kind in Lahore, after General Hospital.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2011.