Protesting PIMS staff get political support

PPP and JI leaders address protesting medics

ISLAMABAD:

A protest by medical and non-medical employees of the largest tertiary care hospital in the federal capital on Wednesday received some support from opposition parties as the protest entered its 25th day.

Protesting against the formation of a board of governors (BOGs) for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) through the Medical Teaching Institute (MTI) Ordinance outside the hospital, doctors, paramedics, nurses and other staff of the facility demanded a resolution of their issues.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Syed Nayyar Bukhari and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Deputy Ameer Liaquat Baloch visited the protesting staffers on Wednesday to express their solidarity with the protesting employees.

Bukhari said that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto had conveyed that their party will not allow the privatisation of Pims.

He added that the job of the government was to provide facilities to the public, not to snatch their livelihood from them.

This incompetent government is snatching bread from the people, he criticised.

Bukhari alleged that an incompetent doctor had been handed the reigns of the hospital’s board.

He recalled that PPP had regularised 500 contractual employees at Pims.

JI’s Baloch said that doctors are people to be proud of, especially given their service during the ongoing novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Every worker and supporter of JI stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the protesters for the protection of this national institution, he said. Baloch added that the MTI ordinance will prove to be a wall of sand.

Criticising the policies of the government, he said that the people have been burdened with crushing inflation and large scale unemployment.

The JI leader further said that the burden of medical expenses has been put on the shoulders of the public. He asserted that the demands put forward by the protesters were legitimate and that their protest was for the poor.

Baloch said that if the issue of Pims staff was not resolved, it would prove the last nail in the government’s coffin.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2020.