LAHORE: The Punjab TB Control Programme administration’s abrupt decision to transfer programme’s most staff, including foreign funded-project employees, to the secretary of operations and monitoring unit (SOMU) has provoked outcry. The administration, however, says the move aims at revitalising the programme.

Since the programme administration has transferred some 50 employees being funded by donor Global Fund, the ministry of national health services’common management unit has conveyed its serious concern to the Provincial TB Control Programme (PTP) that it transferred Global Fund paid staff to SOMU without prior approval of principal recipient – the ministry’s CMU.

The ministry reminded the PTP that the staff was hired exclusively from the Global Fund grant for which CMU signed a grant agreement. The programme administration had transferred 20 Global Fund paid employees including programme’s project manager on Aug 30 and later transferred 59 employees including 30-35 Global Fund-paid employees to the SOMU.

The PTP administration claimed that it was observed through various reviews that the achievements of the programme in Active Case Finding and Extended Case Finding were very low as compared to targets for the last many months. It stated that the programme also observed that the case entries of TB on DHIS2 and EMR were having discrepancies as reported by internal data audit. It said all the transferred employees were being attached with the SOMU for active monitoring of TB Control Programme activities and to enhance the performance to achieve desired goals.

The PTP had also attached all 131 tehsil tuberculosis assistants posted at tehsil and district level with the monitoring and evaluation assistants in district monitoring offices to perform their duties.

The aggrieved staff members say the SOMU, generally collecting data from hospitals and other healthcare facilities, was being run by the primary and healthcare department secretary by attaching staff from different wings of the department.

A senior transferred official, when contacted, claimed the PTP was performing at its optimum level as it was detecting more and more TB patients in the province and offering them due treatment, medicines as well as all facilities extended by the Global Fund. “PTP is leading among all provinces’ programmes but it has been evaluated by non-technical people to allege the programme performance is below the mark,” another disgruntled employee told Dawn.

The official stated that the SOMU was doing nothing for the cause of PTP but collecting data about machinery and materials. “The SOMU did not do even one per cent of PTP jobs so far,” the official alleged.

Officials say the medicine supply to the patients will not be affected immediately as drugs are being released for the second quarter of the current fiscal.

When contacted, Punjab TB Control Programme’s Programme Director Muhammad Suhail said the PTP was being revitalized besides rationalizing the “over-staffing” that include employees of the Punjab government. “The PTP’s function and performance has seriously been damaged due to over-staffing,” Mr Suhail said.

At SOMU, he said, all staff’s alignment and field monitoring strategy would be set and the PTP wings might be increased to improve case-catch and surveillance of TB patients.

About the health ministry’s concern, the PTP programme director said a meeting with the health ministry was scheduled on Monday. He said the ministry would be told that the PTP head was the controlling officer of all employees in the programme. “The PTP employees cannot be controlled by the centre as administrative powers lie with the province after the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

“The attachment of PTP staff with SOMU is a temporary arrangement as they all will soon be re-organised and re-launched in the programme,” the PTP programme director said.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2023