KARACHI: Patients are facing a lot of hardship at Karachi Civil Hospital’s burns centre these days due to a conflict between the administration and employees, it emerged on Tuesday.

A critical facility that caters to the poor patients not only from Karachi but also from the interior of Sindh and Balochistan, the CHK burns centre has been operating under a memorandum of understanding, signed between the Friends of the Burns Centre (FOBC) and the CHK administration more than a decade ago. About 800 to 1,000 patients are admitted annually to the centre where they are treated free of cost.

According to sources, the present conflict that seems to have its roots in political appointments has cost the facility dearly; the non-governmental organisation (FOBC) that was earlier looking after the centre’s affairs has stopped direct hiring and limited its role to funds’ provision and monitoring whereas half of the centre’s employees have either been transferred to the CHK or ‘sacked’.

During a visit to the facility, it was found that the emergency room where normally three persons performed their duties at a time was functioning with only one female wound-dresser and a nurse was managing both paediatric and intensive care units with 11 children at the same time. The condition of one child who also had cerebral palsy was critical in the ICU.

“It’s difficult to give quality care to patients in the absence of adequate staff,” a staff member told Dawn.

One operating theatre, he said, had remained closed for two days as there were no relevant technicians available. The emergency room had been without a wound-dresser for a few days in the evening and night shifts, he added.

The situation, sources said, had developed when employees presented a charter of demands to the administration and later held a demonstration with the backing of a political party at a time when a donor was on a visit to the facility.

Upset over the chaos, the individual left the facility without giving any donation and that caused so much embarrassment to the FOBC president that he decided to quit.

This was followed by a detailed meeting between the CHK administration and the FOBC and it was decided that all the CHK staff would be transferred back to the hospital and the centre’s staff would be hired through a company.

Sharing their worries over the tripartite administrative mechanism, the staff said that employment was being offered to selected people on strict terms and conditions. In some cases, they said, the salaries being offered were lesser to what employees were getting earlier.

“They have sacked those paramedics who were working at the CHK and burns centre both and receiving dual salaries. But, we want to ask if this practice is illegal in our case, then why doctors are allowed dual service?” argued another staff member.

Upon contact, Dr Ehmar Al-Ibran, the man in charge of the burns centre, said that there was no doubt that patients were suffering as the centre faced serious staff shortage but matters were being sorted out.

“We hope that the situation will get better in coming days. The CHK and FOBC are addressing employees’ concerns but we have to ensure a smooth running of the centre,” he said.

FOBC president Zahid Saeed said that what happened last month during the demonstration was extremely regretting as protesters misbehaved with the donor.

“We are collecting and spending millions of rupees every year on the burns centre for no other motive but a humanitarian cause. The FOBC had started hiring on CHK’s recommendation because the hospital was facing staff shortage and had no money to pay salaries. But, now it has been decided that hiring will be done through a company,” he explained, adding that FOBC would only be responsible for funding and monitoring as it had to make sure that donations were being rightly spent.

Regarding concerns over new appointment rules, he said that only those employees had been sacked who were also working at CHK and receiving dual salaries which, he said, was illegal.

“The FOBC will be spending 33pc more on employees through the contract as it offers life insurance, registration with the Employees Old Age Benefit and gratuity. Forty-five people (the centre earlier had more than a hundred employees) have rejoined it and more will come,” he said in reply to a question.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2014