PMA demands audit of hospitals managed under PPP model

PMA Sindh general secretary accuses health minister of being inefficient, unanswerable

HYDERABAD: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) Sindh has demanded third-party evaluation and a review of the public-private partnerships in public hospitals. At a press conference in Hyderabad on Monday, the PMA's representatives also demanded the immediate provision of medicines, especially for hepatitis, HIV and dog-bite patients and installation of scanning machines in all districts of Sindh.

"The doctors will start a protest movement across the province if the provincial government doesn't start implementing our demands within 15 days," warned PMA Sindh's general secretary, Dr Pir Manzoor Ali, who was accompanied by the PMA's office bearers. He explained that in the first leg of the protest, the doctors will hold demonstrations and organise rallies, adding that the boycott of duties will follow if the government continued to neglect their concerns.

Ali accused the Sindh health minister Dr Azra Pechuho of being inefficient in her administrative decisions and unanswerable because she is the sister of Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari. "There is no one to ask her anything and because of this, we have been witnessing a degeneration in the provincial government's health services," he alleged.

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He claimed that the health secretaries are not allowed to continue on their position for longer than seven to eight months even though their official tenure is for a period of three years. The PMA's leader maintained that the frequent reshuffle in the health bureaucracy entailed a fluid health policy that keeps changing with every new official. Ali argued that merit is also not considered in posting the managing directors, district health officers and medical superintendents of the vertical health programs.

"The department, which has been earmarked a budget of Rs130 billion, is being consumed by corruption," he alleged. According to him, the health department is not procuring medicines and, consequently, not releasing the medicines to the health facilities either.

"This is the first public-private partnership model in the world where the private partner doesn't spend a penny and they are using all the resources of the government and making millions," he said while commenting on the handover of the administrative control of the government hospitals to the non-government organisations. "The government should review the PPP policy vis-a-vis the health department and conduct a third party audit of the NGOs managing the government hospitals."

He added that the government should immediately take back the hospitals from the NGOs which have failed to fulfill the objectives of the PPP and take action against those that have misappropriated the public funds. 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2019.