PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday directed the National Accountability Bureau, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to produce a detailed report about the basic health units (BHUs) in the province highlighting how many of them are functional and how many vacancies they have.

A bench consisting of Justice Roohul Amin Khan and Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan issued the order after NAB deputy prosecutor Azeemdad submitted a preliminary report about BHUs in Wazir subdivision of Bannu district declaring that out of 125 those health units, 39 are non-functional.

He added that according to the NAB initial inquiry, 86 BHUs were functional in the sub-division.

The NAB deputy prosecutor said that the province had a total of 1,038 BHUs.

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The bench asked him how many posts are lying vacant in those BHUs and why the NAB isn’t taking action when a large number of BHUs are non-functional with many positions awaiting appointments.

Mr Azeemdad said that the NAB acted only after received any complaint about administrative or financial affairs.

The court had taken notice of the issue of vacancies in Bannu BHUs sometimes ago while hearing a petition filed by a resident of Bannu district, Sher Daraz Khan, for appointment to a local BHU. It had directed the anti-graft watchdog to conduct an inquiry into the matter.

The petitioner had claimed that the relevant officials of the health department had not been following the court’s orders for his appointment.

He had added that several posts of Class-IV had been lying vacant in BHUs but despite that, the authorities had not been following the court’s orders.

Additional deputy prosecutor of the NAB Mohammad Ali also appeared before the bench and said that his organisation had submitted the preliminary inquiry report about the matters related to BHUs in the province and would submit the detailed report after the completion of the inquiry.

He said that a joint investigation team had been formed to look into certain alleged irregularities in the affairs of BHUs.

The bench fixed March 26 for next hearing into the case.

The Bannu deputy district health officer informed the bench that the health department had begun the process of recruiting Class-IV employees in BHUs and would prefer the relevant landowners.

The bench observed that the appointment of the owners of the land on which a BHU was set up would be a violation of the Supreme Court judgements.

It ordered the appointment of Class-IV employees in accordance with the relevant rules.

The bench wondered about the poor people, who didn’t have land to donate to the health department for the establishment of BHUs.

It directed the NAB to submit the detailed report about the number of BHUs, how many of these are functional, how many employees have been working there, and how many positions are vacant.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2022