GHA demands resignation of health minister

Alliance protests against arrest, torture of doctors and paramedical staff

PESHAWAR: The Grand Health Alliance (GHA) has announced that their protest would resume on Monday, saying they would not accept anything less than the resignation of the provincial health minister and revocation of the District Health Authority (DHA) and Regional Health Authority (RHA) Act.

While talking to The Express Tribune Peshawar over the phone the Young Doctors’ Association (YDA) President Dr Rizwan Kundi has said that the doctors were protesting in a peaceful manner for their due rights, and revocation of the regional and districts health authorities, and the resignation of the health minister because the provincial government has used force against peaceful and unarmed doctors.

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“Several YDA office holders, as well as other doctors and medical staffers,  have been arrested in Mardan while most of the others have been seriously injured by the police,” Dr Kundi added.

Police have arrested most of the representatives of the GHA under clause III of Maintenance of Public Order (MPO). Those arrested were then shifted to the prison and physically tortured. He stated that most of the protesters were from the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Teaching Hospitals (KTH) and other health facilities, they were doctors and members from other associations in the provincial capital, he said.

“We demand that the provincial health minister resigns from his portfolio immediately. We are also demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s cousin Dr Nowsherwan Burki as he is leading the course to privatise the health sector in the province and we would never accept that,” the YDA president said.

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“We have experienced oppression from the provincial government and police force just to save the provincial health structures from privatisation and warned that we would continue our struggles until the full restoration of the old structure and revocation of the RHA and DHA Act in the province,” the YDA president added.

It is pertinent to mention here that scores of doctors and affiliated health service providers have been injured in the police’s use of force against the GHA on Saturday, while most of the arrested doctors remain behind bars in Mardan prisons.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2019.