PMA: ‘Sialkot doctors not getting allowance’

CM approved to regularise 1,150 senior registrars and 550 district specialists in 2009, but only 1,000 had been.

LAHORE: Public doctors in Sialkot have not been receiving the Health Practice Allowance (HPA) in violation of Punjab government instructions, the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) said on Sunday.

“We have conveyed our reservations to the Health Department time and again but so far no action has been taken in this regard. We should be given HPA, like doctors in other public hospitals in Punjab,” said a doctor working in the Sialkot District Headquarters Hospital. PMA office bearers said the officials concerned should take notice of this and ensure that doctors get the allowance.

The PMA also expressed a concern that the regulations secretary had not been following Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s orders. They said the chief minister had approved a summary to regularise 1,150 senior registrars and 550 district specialists in 2009, but only 1,000 had been regularised.

“A total of 400 senior registrars and 300 district specialists working on current charge, ad hoc basis and on their own pay scale are still deprived of regularisations. The summary regarding regularisation of 700 doctors is pending with the regulations secretary and he isn’t ready to sign it,” they said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2011.