Service rules: Doctors say secy delaying changes

Accuse Regulations Secy Muhammad Ilyas of delaying changes to service rules certain posts.

LAHORE: The Young Doctors Association (YDA) has accused Regulations Secretary Muhammad Ilyas of delaying changes to service rules for senior registrars, district specialists and assistant professors and demanded his resignation. In a press release issued on Sunday, YDA officials threatened to hold a sit-in at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat if the secretary did not notify the amendments to the service rules. They said that the amendments in the rules for the appointment of assistant professors had been drawn up and approved in 2009, but the secretary had still not issued the notification. They said that he was insisting that he would send the summary first to the CM’s Secretariat for approval. They said that the rules allowed administrative departments to propose amendments in the service rules of their employees. Once they were approved by the Service Rules Committee, the Regulations Department was bound to approve them, they said. YDA officials Dr Rana Sohail, Dr Salman Kazmi, Dr Talha Sherwani, Dr Khuda Bakhsh, Dr Khawar Khan, Dr Aslam Rao, Dr Ghulam Qasim, Dr Nazim Ali and Dr Maryam Farooq appealed to the chief minister to resolve the matter urgently. Earlier this year, the YDA was at the forefront of a strike at public sector hospitals by junior doctors demanding better pay and alterations to their service structure.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2011.