PESHAWAR: The district administration of Peshawar on Saturday shifted 15 detained doctors and paramedics to the Mardan Central Jail for one month as the medical fraternity extended protest against Friday’s police action against its members outside the Lady Reading Hospital to hospitals across the province.

An order issued by Peshawar’s deputy commissioner said the detainees had been sent to the jail under 3-MPO for making a violent entry to the LRH, blocking a major road, paralysing activities in the provincial capital, and badly damaging property.

The police said a total of 26 people had been nominated in the FIR on Friday’s violence.

The doctors and paramedics took out processions across the province condemning Peshawar police’s action against protesters.

They announced that the strike would continue until the detainees were freed and their demands were met.

Medical fraternity extends strike to hospitals across province

The Grand Health Alliance representing health employees on Saturday began strike across the province asking the government to free doctors and paramedics, reverse the enactment of the Regional and District Health Authorities Bill, and remove health minister Hisham Inamullah Khan and chairman of the prime minister’s task force on healthcare Dr Nausherwan Burki.

He alleged that Dr Burki wanted to ruin the province’s healthcare system.

“The baton charging of peaceful protesters was a shameful act of police. The district administration had imposed Section 144 on the hospital premises on the directives of US-based Dr Burki,” GHA leader Dr Amir Taj told a presser.

Dr Taj said Dr Burki had been tasked with managing the province’s health system by remote control though he wasn’t even registered with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council as a doctor.

He claimed that after the enactment of the Regional and District Health Authorities (RDHA) Act, 2019, the government would terminate health employees by a single stroke of pen.

He said the health minister had powerless and he acted as told by Dr Burki.

GHA leader Dr Rizwan Rajput said the alliance had asked its members to close their private clinics against Friday’s violence and that the boycott of duty would continue until the demands were met.

“We demand the government order a judicial inquiry into police violence against doctors to punish the culpable people,” he said.

Dr Rajput said the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act enforced across the province in 2015 had caused great harm to the teaching hospitals, while the RDHA would do the same to the district health facilities.

The Pakistan Medical Association flayed violence against protesting doctors.

“The imposition of Section 144 on the hospital premises doesn’t make any sense. We demand the immediate release of the detained doctors and paramedics as well as an impartial probe into the violence committed by police against them,” PMA secretary general Dr SM Qaisar Sajjad said in a statement.

Dr Sajjad said the doctors were subjected to violence for protesting the controversial RDHA Act, 2019, while exercising their democratic right.

He said PMA rejected that legislation outright and asked the government not to enforce it without consulting stakeholders, especially doctors.

“We want the government to speak to protesters instead of trying to resolve the issue by force otherwise the agitation will spread to other parts of the province,” he said warning police against making more arrests.

Meanwhile, health facilities across the province remained virtually closed with doctors and other health workers boycotting duty. The staff members offered only the emergency services to visitors.

The Pakistan Peoples Party and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Bar Council condemned the action against peaceful doctors in the LRH.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2019