PESHAWAR: Senior doctors with vast administrative experience and qualifications have resented the rejection of their applications for hospital director positions at medical teaching institutions in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

As the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) and Peshawar Institute of Cardiology (PIC) are in the process of recruiting hospital directors, many senior doctors, who are also civil servants, are unlikely to be shortlisted, official sources told Dawn.

They said that in the last few years, civil servants had caused problems by not quitting their jobs after selection for key MTI positions.

Chairman of the MTI Policy Board Prof Nausherwan Barki told Dawn that as per the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015, civil servants could only work in MTIs on deputation and that, too, at the formal request of board of governors when suitable non-civil service candidates weren’t available.

Most shortlisted candidates are likely to be from private sector

“Anyone can apply for an MTI post but they must realise that if they are selected, they will have to permanently relinquish all other positions, including civil service ones. It is up to MTIs to decide whether they require an upfront commitment or post-hoc commitment,” he said.

Sources said that the applications of all civil servants for HD positions, including BPS-19 and BPS-20 officers, had been declined.

They added that some people having managerial experience were in the running as their applications had been accepted.

The sources also said senior retired officers of the health department, including a retired director-general health services, had also been ignored.

They said the reason for application rejection given for civil servants by the respective MTIs was that they hadn’t submitted their no objection certificate from their parent departments. The sources quoted civil servants as claiming that they submitted applications for NoCs to the department but didn’t get a timely response.

They said NoC was a permission certificate from the parent department to apply for another job in or outside the department.

The sources said given the current situation, most candidates likely to be shortlisted for the posts would be from the private sector. They added that some candidates, not shortlisted earlier, were added to the list afterwards.

“The entire process has become opaque as the yardstick provided in the Act has been ignored. We fear that none of the serving civil servants will be shortlisted,” an official source told Dawn.

However, officials at the Hayatabad Medical Complex insisted that everything would be clear once the final list of candidates was out.

They said that some candidates had the required experience with overseas qualifications but MTIs had shortlisted managers, who were non-doctors and had never managed even a small hospital.

The civil servants argued that they would abide by MTIRA after selection, so their application should be accepted as they had the experience as well as the desired qualification for the jobs advertised by HMC and PIC.

Sources said that MTIs were going to select people for the private sector to those key positions as in the past, many civil servants worked as medical directors, deans and HDs, but never resigned from their original positions as civil servants in the health department.

Prof Barki said that practice was not in line with the MTI Act, which had clearly mentioned the procedure.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2024