For the government, its decision to grant university status to the Sindh Medical College is piling up problems one after another.
If the reservations of the medical staff at the affiliated hospitals of the new university weren’t enough, the ordinance through which the college was upgraded into a university also expired, legally reverting the institution’s status.
And now a court has also taken note of the authorities’ defiance to its order.
On the government’s failure to maintain the status quo at state-run hospitals, the Sindh minister for inter-provincial coordination and the health secretary have been issued contempt-of-court notices.
The decision came on Monday at the hearing of a number of contempt applications filed in the Sindh High Court by the employees of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) and the National Institute of Child Health (NICH).
These medical institutions were to be transferred from the federal government to the provinces under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, which was passed by parliament in April 2010.
But the medical staff at these hospitals challenged their devolution in the court. On June 20, the Sindh High Court issued an order restraining the authorities from changing the “character” of the three medical institutions.
The order of status quo granted by the high court has been violated [by granting university status to the college], the petitioners’ leading lawyer, Anwar Mansoor Khan, argued before Justice Maqbool Baqar, Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar on Monday. The respondents have changed the law and have created Sindh Medical University under the Sindh Medical University Ordinance issued in June, whereby JPMC, NICVD and NICH were affiliated as teaching hospitals, changing their characters altogether, he submitted.
After hearing his arguments, the full bench besides issuing contempt notices to the two respondents for September 17 also directed them to submit a copy of the ordinance in the court.
Six identical petitions filed by 165 employees of the formerly federally controlled institutions are being heard at the Sindh High Court.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 11th, 2012.
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