KARACHI: The Sindh Government Children Hospital North Karachi that used to serve more than 2,000 children of Central district on a daily basis has been closed without disclosing reasons behind the decision, leaving both patients and its staff members uncertain about its future.

The workers and area people are not sure about the reason behind the closure of the hospital run by the provincial government relying only on speculations that the health facility was closed due to non-payment of salaries of the staff and provision of funds for other operational tasks.

The situation came to light when the district Central chapter of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) held a demonstration outside the hospital with staff members of the health facility.

Karachi JI chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman led the demonstration. He condemned the Sindh government over its “incompetence and corruption” that resulted in the closure of a hospital that used to provide health facilities to over 2,500 children a day.

“Unfortunately the staff members of the hospital have not been paid for the past seven months by the Sindh government, resulting in closure of the hospital,” he said. “No one knows that how many precious lives could have been saved if this hospital had remained operational. Who’s responsible if even a single life is lost due to the closure of this hospital — no one but the Sindh government of the Pakistan Peoples Party.”

He said every single minister of the Sindh government claimed its success mainly in health sector showing huge spending of the budget in the particular sector. The PPP government, he alleged, in fact misled the people of Sindh and Karachi because the budget allocated for the health sector was never spent transparently and most of the funds were misappropriated every fiscal year.

JI leader Syed Wajih Hassan told the protesters that the Sindh government had allocated Rs172 billion for the health department in its annual budget but it could not pay for staffs’ salaries and medicines of the hospital.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2022