KARACHI, Aug 12: Pakistan’s premier heart disease institution, the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases is facing severe financial problems as the Sindh government has not released the first quarter grant meant for the employees’ salaries and utility bills, it emerged on Sunday.

Sources in the heart disease centre said that in the absence of funds approved by the Sindh government, the NICVD administration was diverting funds it had generated on its own and through non-governmental organisations to meet the salary and utility components of its recurring expenditures.

The sources added that if the current situation continued, the coming months could witness a decrease in subsidies and treatment facilities offered to hundreds of patients daily.

The provincial health department is supposed to manage the financial affairs of the NICVD, an erstwhile federal government institution handed over to the province in the wake of the devolution enforced after the 18th constitutional amendment.

Despite reminders to the provincial health department, it had not provided the first quarter of the approved annual grant of Rs350 million, a source said, adding that normally the government made payments to the institution in parts beginning in July.

However, the NICVD management had already paid salaries of July to about 1,000 regular employees and now for the August salaries it was depending on savings or funds it had saved for a rainy day through different sources to meet the requirements of other financial heads, including treatments of patients in wards, outpatient departments, cardiac procedures and emergencies, the sources added.

A source said that the NICVD had submitted budgetary proposals amounting to Rs800 million to the provincial government for 2012-13, but only Rs350 million was approved as a grant for the current financial year.

The funds against the salary and utility components either provided by the federal or the provincial government had always proved inadequate, particularly after about 50 per cent increase in the salary of government employees over the past three years, the source said, adding that the NICVD had been contributing to the salaries and utilities from its other heads, which could have repercussions in the months to come.

It was learnt that the hospital’s annual expenditures, such as salary, medicine, utilities, patient treatment subsidies, including about 1,500 patients reporting to the OPD every day, were around Rs1.3 billion.

When contacted, NICVD director Prof Khan Shah Zaman said the delay in the provision of the Sindh government’s grant was a serious matter but, he said, he hoped that the authorities would look into it at the earliest and give relief to the hospital.

“The grant is already inadequate, while on the other hand the income of about Rs1 billion generated through other activities was also proving short in view of the increasing inflation and services and utilities costs,” he said, adding that funds from private sources were also shrinking and proving to be a cumbersome process and as such there was no other way but to pin hopes on the government.