Sindh to get control of three hospitals

Centre, provincial govt to sign agreement for transfer of JPMC, NICH, NICVD

KARACHI:

Preparations have been completed to hand over Karachi's Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), National Institute of Child Health (NICH) and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) to the Sindh government for 25 years before the dissolution of the provincial assembly.

An agreement will be signed between the Centre and the Sindh government regarding the transfer of the control of the three hospitals to the province.

Subsequently, JPMC administration has also issued an advertisement for the recruitment of doctors and consultants for various fields after 11 years in the hospital.

It should be noted that the issue of these three hospitals was pending for the last 11 years.

After the 18th amendment in 2011, these three federally run hospitals were handed over to the Sindh government.

The employees of JPMC, NICVD and NICH approached the court against this decision, in which the employees took a stand that the three hospitals should be kept under the federal government. The case of these three hospitals was under hearing in the court for about 11 years.

Four years ago, the PTI government had agreed to handover the three hospitals to the provincial government citing lack of funds to run them.

During this time, hundreds of employees from the three hospitals had retired after completing their tenure, while the teachers of various faculties from Jinnah Sindh Medical University had also retired, due to which hundreds of posts had become vacant in the three hospitals .

Due to technical reasons, recruitment could not be done on these posts, while the posts of heads of various wards of JPMC were also lying vacant for the last 10 years.

According to the head of JPMC, Professor Shahid Rasool, there are more than 1,000 vacancies in JPMC, while appointments of professors of 12 different departments will also be made. He told The Express Tribune that JPMC is facing severe shortage of manpower.

The recruitment process for various departments in the hospital will be started soon. He said that an advertisement is being published by the JPMC administration regarding these job so that the shortage of doctors and other staff in the hospitals can be met.

Meanwhile, NICH Executive DirectorProfessor Nasir said that more than 400 posts, including doctors, are vacant in the hospital. An advertisement will be published for recruitment on these vacant posts by NICH after the agreement is reached.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2023.