Service structure: Doctors eye easier promotions in rules revamp

Half of doctors hired in grade 17 retire in grade 17.

LAHORE:

Dr Attiya Mubarik was promoted to Basic Pay Scale-20 in 1992. That same year, Anwar A Khan was posted to the Health Department as a young deputy secretary in BPS-18. Twenty years later, Dr Mubarik, the most senior doctor in the Health Department, is serving in the same grade. Khan is now a federal secretary in BPS-22.

Dr Mubarik, the principal of Gujranwala Medical College, is just one example from many of doctors employed by the government who have been stuck in the same grade for several years.

Health Department data for the last eight years shows that 50 per cent of the doctors hired in BPS-17 retired in the same grade they were hired in. A senior Health Department officer said most of these doctors retired because of a lack of promotion prospects. “There is no service structure for promotion,” he said.

A revised service structure was a major demand of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) in its just concluded eight-day strike at outpatient departments in Lahore’s public hospitals. The Punjab government has formed a committee to recommend changes to the service structure. The committee has one month to announce its suggestions.

Officers in the District Management Group (DMG) get time-scale promotions, meaning they get promoted to the next grade after a certain amount of time in service.

In the Health Department, a doctor is promoted to the next grade only when the seat lies vacant, otherwise he or she will not get a promotion regardless of how long they’ve been in a grade and regardless of their qualifications.

Dr Izhar Chaudhry, the general secretary of the Pakistan Medical Association and a faculty member at King Edward Medical University, said that doctors were often frustrated at the regular promotions availed by their colleagues in civil service.

“Many DMG officers competed with doctors to get into medical school and became bureaucrats when they failed,” he said. “When doctors see their fellows who got lower grades become bureaucrats, then get promotions to higher grades, they get frustrated.”

He said that doctors should get a different service structure for promotions. “The principle that a doctor will be promoted to the next grade only when a post becomes vacant is flawed and must be reviewed,” he said.

According to the official data, there are 13,000 medical officers, 684 assistant professors, 419 associate professors, 373 professors, 1,015 senior registrars and 1,219 district specialists in the Health Department.

Another PMA official said that the association had worked out a 13-grade structure for medical professionals last year – he called it the Health Professional Scales  when doctors were on strike for better pay. Nurses and paramedics would be in grades 1 to 9, while doctors would start in grade 9 and go up to grade 13, he said. A doctor starting his career would get a salary of Rs78,000 per month, while a professor would get around Rs300,000.

The federal government notified such a job structure last year and its doctors are getting those salaries, but the Punjab government says it can’t afford it, said Dr Chaudhry.

A Health Department official, asked to comment on the PMA proposal, said that the department would need to double its budget to pay those salaries. “It’s simply not feasible right now,” he said.

The YDA Punjab and YDA Pakistan both support changes to the service structure. “We are in talks with the Punjab government on this particular issue and hope it will be resolved soon,” said YDA Punjab spokesman Dr Nasir Bokhari.

YDA Pakistan President Dr Rana Sohail said that the association backed the service structure proposed by the PMA.

Chief Minister’s Special Assistant on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique said that the government had also submitted a proposal on service structure in the Supreme Court. He said that the issue would be resolved in consultation with doctors.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2012.