Shedding ‘unnecessary burden’: Sindh health dept sacks 680 employees in one go

The staffers of civil hospital were reportedly being paid salaries from a fund for patients.

HYDERABAD:

In a mass lay-off exercise, the Sindh Health Department has removed from service one third of it’s over 2,000 workforce employed at the Civil Hospital.

Around 680 staff members, overwhelmingly paramedics and only four doctors, working on the contractual and daily-wage basis from 2005 were sacked on Thursday. “These jobs were given out on political basis and without following the official rules of appointment,” said the Medical Superintendent Dr Khalid Shaikh.

The 1,440-bedded hospital is the biggest government health facility in the district. A bulk of its patients comes from different parts of Sindh. According to Dr Shaikh, the fired employees were an unnecessary burden over the hospital’s finances as their jobs were never sanctioned by the health department.

The removal elicited protests by the paramedics who complained that were made to work without salary for the last two years. “We were kept in the dark about our jobs as they kept telling us that our unpaid salaries will be given after regularisation of our services,” said a protesting paramedic, Nisar Ahmed.

The workers who were let go include clerks, security guards and four doctors. Dr Aleem Thebo told The Express Tribune that the hospital was paying their salaries from a social welfare fund which was actually collected for the patients. “Every month we collect some Rs500,000 to Rs700,000 to support the needy patients. But until now, we were using that fund to pay the salaries of the contractual workers.”

The hospital has a sanctioned workforce of 1,350 paramedics, clerks, security guards and drivers in addition to over 2,000 doctors, including around post graduate students. Dr Thebo maintained that the sudden removal will not affect duties at the hospital.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2013.