PMDC registrar told to resign or get axed

Defunct council’s spokesman sent on forced leave

Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) has started to rough-cut the employees of the dissolved Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) as it sent two top officials on indefinite forced leaves.

PMC approved to sack the PMDC Registrar Brigadier (retd) Hafizuddin Siddiqui if he does not resign from his seat. The council’s spokesperson has also been sent on forced leave for an indefinite period.

The first meeting after PMC restoration was recently held under the chairmanship of Dr Arshad Taqi.

The participants of the meeting gave resignation choice to PMDC Registrar Hafizuddin or else approved to fire him.

The approval to appoint Dr Shahista Zeeshan as PMC Secretary on a monthly pay of Rs0.2 million was also given in the meeting.

The meeting concurred that permanent employees of the council would be paid their October-November salaries as per the old structure.

However, according to the PMC Act, the PMDC employees would not remain on their previous designations and they would be assigned new duties by the PMC. The Human Resource (HR) committee has been authorised to place the resources in any of seven departments.

HR committee would be headed by PMC Vice President Ali Raza.

Further, the finance committee has been tasked to review the salaries of PMDC regular employees. The committee has been given 45 days deadline to examine if the regular employees were being paid salaries in correspondence to their work.

The council also approved to publicise the inspection report of private medical colleges prepared in 2019.

The axing measures have left the PMDC employees in a quandary and they were worried about the future of their jobs under the new PMC management, sources said.

The Supreme Court has reconstituted the regulatory body of medical profession – the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) – and formed and 11-member ad-hoc committee to look after its affairs. The committee Ws headed by a former SC judge Ejaz Afzal Khan.

The PTI led federal government on Oct 19, 2019 dissolved the PMDC through a presidential ordinance that replaced the authority with a new body, the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC).

Later, the Ministry of National Health Services also terminated services of most of the PMDC employees and sealed its building.

The sacked employees later moved the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 11 declared the presidential ordinance null and void and restored PMDC along with the services of its employees.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2020.