PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Tuesday issued a stay order suspending appointments to the recently-created 226 posts in the health department’s management cadre and sought explanation from the health secretary and health services director general about it.

Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan issued notices to the health secretary and health services director general to file comments until Dec 20 about a petition jointly filed by 23 doctors, including senior medical officer of the health department Dr Mohammad Saleem and others serving in the management cadre.

The bench directed the health not to fill those 226 posts of different grades in the meantime.

Asks secretary, DG to respond to petition on controversies about management cadre

The petitioners have made multiple pleas seeking directives of the court for the provincial health department regarding different controversies related to the management cadre in the department.

They challenged a notification issued by the health department on Sept 9, 2016, about the creation of 226 new posts in the management cadre.

They requested the court to declare the creation of those posts without absorption of the existing qualified and experienced employees against the spirit of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health (Management) Service Rules, 2008.

The petitioners also challenged around a dozen other notifications issued by the health department from Sept 2009 to Aug 2016 through which several doctors were either inducted in the management cadre from the general cadre without fulfilling the required qualification or were promoted without the requisite experience.

Ijaz Khan Sabi, lawyer for the petitioners, requested the court to direct the health department to act in accordance with the KP Health (Management) (Service Rules) 2008 notified on Dec 11, 2008.

He said majority of the employees holding key posts in the management cadre had acquired diploma or qualifications in a period in which they were in service but they had neither obtained any NOC nor was any leave sanctioned to them, which prima facie showed that those diplomas or certificates were fake.

The lawyer said before 2009, all posts in the health department were of general cadre but through a Dec 11, 2008, notification, the management rules were notified.

“Under Section 10 of those rules, an option was given to all employees for their absorption in the management cadre.

Again on June 30, 2009, the said option was circulated among heads of different colleges and hospitals giving employees ust one week for adopting it,” he said.

The lawyer claimed through a letter issued on July 14, the health services DG purportedly communicated to the secretary health the final list of the employees, who had opted for management cadre absorption but the list was never notified but the petitioners managed to get a copy of it in 2015.

He said several employees were included in the management cadre by the health department after the cut-off date of one week.

The lawyer said several doctors, who had completed graduation in 2010, much after that cut-off date, but they were still inducted in the management cadre.

He added that some doctors with ‘questionable’ degrees in public health were also made part of that cadre.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2016