KARACHI: The Sindh chief minister has approved a summary seeking permission to fill over 600 vacant posts of BPS-01 to BPS-16 at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) on an urgent contingency basis, it emerged on Saturday.

These sanctioned posts, which include 200 nursing posts, have been vacant since 2011. Doctors are not part of the recruitment process as they are hired in BPS-17.

Source said the summary had been approved of 654 posts, while the JPMC had sought recruitment on 691 posts.

“These appointments are desperately needed as an acute shortage of staff has greatly affected hospital operation over the years. We are hoping that immediate hiring of staff would bring about significant improvement in patient services,” said JPMC executive director Dr Shahid Rasool.

Province is accused of making political appointments to change demography of federal hospital

Once a notification was issued in this respect, the administration would initiate the process of making appointments and try adjust the staff hired for Covid-19 services, he added.

According to a finance department letter attached with the summary, the expenditure involved (in the recruitment process) “will be met out by way of re-appropriation within existing budgetary provision subject to the condition that the recruitment would be made on the domicile of Sindh province.

“Besides, the administrative department is advised to initiate the hiring process on a regular basis,” says a finance department letter attached with the summary.

Fears of political appointments

Commenting on the situation, senior JPMC doctors said the yet-to-be-initiated hiring process wouldn’t help improve patient services at the hospital. In fact, they believed, facilities would deteriorate further.

“This is because the provincial government is fast filling out posts at JPMC on the basis of political grounds and nepotism in an attempt to change demography of the hospital, which is still a federal government facility on paper where recruitments should be made on the basis of clearly defined quota system under which Punjab would get 45pc posts followed by Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhaw, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB),” a doctor told Dawn on the condition of anonymity.

He referred to the court case over hospital’s ownership between the federal and provincial government that had not been pending for many years.

The provincial government’s alleged malpractices, he said, recently came to the fore again when it posted 100 doctors to JPMC from the interior parts of the province ignoring the fact that Sindh already facing doctors’ shortage.

“It was also a violation of the academic council’s decision that had called for giving posts to those doctors who were already working at the hospital on deputation.

“Amid this situation, the provincial government has deprived a large number of the old staff of promotion for almost 14 years, forcing several doctors to join other institutions.”

The JPMC as well as National Institute of Child Health (NICH) and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) have been facing administrative uncertainty since 2011 when their employees sought the Sindh High Court’s intervention against the likely devolution of these institutions to the provincial government under the 18th Amendment.

The matter remained pending till 2016 when the court ordered that the control of these hospitals would remain with the federal government. This judgement, however, was suspended by the Supreme Court the same year on an appeal filed by the Sindh government.

In Jan 2019, the court rejected the plea of the Sindh government and ordered the federal government to take control of the JPMC, NICH in Karachi and Sheikh Zayed Postgraduate Medical Institute in Lahore. Moreover, the court had stipulated a 90-day period for the transition.

The federal government, however, is yet to implement this order. The delay, according to media reports, has been due to the federal government’s consideration to hand over the hospitals to the provincial government. This couldn’t happen because of strained relations between the two governments.

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2022