LAHORE, May 28: Even before their party has formally taken charge of the provincial government, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz newly-elected lawmakers have started interfering in the administrative matters of teaching hospitals.

The administrations of two teaching hospitals and a newly-established healthcare facility have been facing ‘pressure’ from the PML-N lawmakers in purely administrative matters.

A senior official seeking anonymity told Dawn two newly-elected lawmakers of the party, including a member of the National Assembly, had been exerting pressure on Sir Ganga Ram Hospital’s administration to ‘ignore’ complaints of serious negligence against a private company which was awarded the contract for cleanliness/janitorial services at the Accident and Emergency Block of the teaching facility.

He said an MPA-elect approached some senior members of the SGH administration a few days back and warned them against taking the contractor to task for negligence and misconduct.

The lawmaker told the administrations to desist from canceling the company’s contract, he said. When he was informed that the order for contract cancellation had already been converted into a show-cause notice on the ‘order’ of an MNA of his party, he insisted to withdrawing the notice, the official added.

The show-cause notice issued on May 21 warned the company of cancellation of its contract mentioning public complaints regarding misconduct, dereliction of duty and corruption by its staff.

The official said the visiting parliamentarian got annoyed and told the senior management that any action against the contractor would be taken as ‘action’ against party workers.

According to documents, the contract was awarded to M/s Kaleem Brothers & Co., in November 2012 for Rs419,000 per month for janitors’ salaries, cleaning material, machines etc.

In the agreement, the contractor had pledged to hire services of 50 janitors and three supervisors.

But the hospital administration received serious complaints from the visitors, attendants, patients and even the administrative officials about the contract violation which adversely affected the healthcare deliver.

The documents said a duty DMS Dr Imran Haneef wrote in the complaint lodged on March 21, “Janitorial services were very poor. Total janitorial workers present on duty were only 15”.DMS Imran Haneef also submitted a complaint to the MS about the conduct and working of the janitorial staff, besides leveling allegations of corruption against them. It was alleged that the lower staff received bribe from patients’ attendants and give the collected amount to their respective supervisors -- Arslan, Waseem and Naveed. If these staffers were asked to perform their duties, they started protests against the administration. The staff enjoyed patronage of the supervisors, who in some cases even hurled life threats on the on-duty DMS. There were also allegations of ‘moral corruption’ against them.

Dr Imran mentioned in the complaint that under such circumstances the DMS was unable to perform duty, seeking action against the culprits.

“Janitorial services were very poor. When I asked a supervisor about his absence, he misbehaved with me in the presence of staff and also threatened to kill me”, he said.

Dr Nazia Khalid complained to the authorities on March 15, “Total number of workers was 13 but at the time of round, I found only six of them present.” She said daily warnings were being given to the supervisors but to no avail. She mentioned it had become difficult to keep the emergency department clean.

Another duty DMS, Dr Arif, also complained about poor janitorial services and shortage of sweepers.

The official said despite such serious complaints no action was taken against the company concerned.

He said another MNA-elect barred a senior doctor from taking charge as MS of newly-constructed Government Hospital Shahdra, Lahore.

Giving details, he said Health Secretary Arif Nadeem transferred Sir Ganga Ram Hospital AMS (Admin) Dr Asim Hameed and posted him as Shahdara Hospital MS on Monday through a notification (No SOGC-A-25/05). He said when the doctor reached the hospital the same day he was barred from taking charge of his office. Dr Asim was told that the MNA want to get a senior doctor of his choice appointed against the post.

Another such incident occurred at Mayo Hospital when a winning party legislator-elect and other senior activists pressurised the doctors to shift nephrology department from Musafar Khana to any other portion of the hospital. They visited the department in groups and allegedly harassed the on-duty doctors for not vacating the building. The doctors brought the matter to the knowledge of the administration.