ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court was on Tuesday requested to initiate contempt proceedings against the prime minister and other senior federal government officials for not implementing its Jan 17, 2019 verdict in which transfer of three Karachi hospitals to the Sindh government was held to be illegal.

The Supreme Court had in its judgement held that transfer of three major hospitals in Karachi — Jinnah Postgraduate Medical College (JPMC), National Institute of Cardio Vascular Diseases (NICVD) and National Institute of Child Health (NICH) — after devolution of the health sector under the 18th Constitution Amendment from the Centre to the province was unconstitutional.

Petitioner Dr Ayesha Iftikhar, a professor with 29 years of service at JPMC to her credit, has named as respondents Prime Minister Imran Khan, federal Cabinet Secretary Maroof Afzal, National Health Services Secretary Faisal Sultan, Finance Secretary Muhammad Khashih-ur-Rehman, Law Secretary Arshad Farooq Faheem, Accountant General of Pakistan Sardar Azmat Shafi and Sindh Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah.

The petitioner pleaded that she was a Grade-19 professor but had been working in BPS-20 since November 2016 without any perks and privileges. She said she had not been officially promoted to BPS-20 since 2011 due to the devolution of these institutions from the federal government to the Sindh government. She said she was being affected by non-implementation of the SC judgement.

Dr Ayesha contended that she was now eligible to be promoted to BPS-21 for being most senior and qualified person along with completion of due length of the required experience. She argued that the apex court’s verdict was binding on the departments concerned, but unfortunately it seemed the judgement had not been implemented due to some misunderstanding.

The petitioner regretted that about 1,100 employees in JPMC, 254 in NICVD and 600 in NICH were facing problems or being denied allowances. She said the federal government and its relevant divisions were reluctant to implement the binding judgement on the grounds that they had not completed the process in 90 days rather asked the apex court to grant extension to complete the exercise.

The petitioner regretted that due to the reluctance on the part of the federal government, salaries of the employees of these three institutions could not be released from the AGPR to the Accountant General Sindh for the month of June 2019.

The petition regretted that a committee under the PM’s special assistant on health had suggested negotiations with the province on a management contract since it had not been advisable to keep control over the health units under the federal government, contrary to what the SC judgement had required.

Referring to the financial constraints in keeping these institutions with the federal government, the petition argued that violation of the apex court judgement would have a negative impact on the working of these institutions, recalling that in the budget for financial year 2019-20, Rs45.5 billion had been allocated for the Karachi package, Rs10bn for the Quetta package, Rs100bn for the Youth Loan Scheme and similar funds for other projects.

It seemed that the finance department was giving preference to other projects over implementation of the apex court’s binding verdict, it regretted.

In its judgement, the Supreme Court had held that JPMC, NICVD, NICH, etc, fell within the ambit of Entry No.16 of the Federal Legislative List and could not have been transferred or devolved to the province of Sindh.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2020