LAHORE: The Punjab Health Facilities Management Company (PHFMC) is heading towards a ‘crisis’ due to the internal rifts putting at stake the healthcare services to a large number of patients at the primary health facilities.

It is evident from the fact that after the resignation of three directors of the high-powered board of the company, more officials are thinking of quitting it.

One of the major reasons of the crisis is said to be undue interference in the administrative matters of the Board of Directors which is unable to enjoy autonomy for the last many months. Set up under section 42 of the Companies Ordinance, 1984, the Company is running 13,96 primary level health facilities in 14 districts of Punjab, including district headquarters hospitals, rural health centres, basic health units and dispensaries.

The districts include Lahore, Faisalabad, DG Khan, Rahim Yar Khan, Lodhran, Sahiwal and Kasur. Thousands of patients from peripheries and other towns visit these state-run health facilities to get primary level healthcare.

An official told Dawn on Sunday that for the first time the company was functioning without the Board of Directors for the last two months or so. He said that under the Companies Act 2017, the Board of Directors was given ‘powers’ to maintain its autonomy and independent position in order to discourage the bureaucratic interference.

For this, four independent members were appointed from the private sector and they were assigned key roles to discharge its core functions. They were vested powers to draft and circulate policies, approve and dispense annual budget to the tune of Rs5.5 billion, employment of thousands of doctors, nurses and other staff and create posts.

Most importantly, he said, the Board was authorised to appointment four key and top officers -- the chief executive officer of the company, chief internal auditor, chief financial officer and company secretary. These are high-profile statutory posts and the officers appointed against these top slots played a decisive role to run the PHFMC, the official said.

He added that it was quite unfortunate that out of four directors of the company, three have resigned from their post “in protest’ against the undue interference of the bureaucracy.”

Some of them left the organisation when CEO Naseem Sadiq resigned from his office reportedly to protest against interference by some elements.

The directors who resigned were Dr Sohail Ahmad, Huma Maqsood and Dr Javeria Manan, leaving Dr Arshad Usmani as independent director.

The official said these officials had experience to run the government and private sector institutions in the past. Like, he said, Dr Sohail had served as health secretary Punjab in 2004-5 and was key person behind the establishment of Rescue 1122 and a mega programme to convert single-ward emergency departments of the government hospitals of Punjab into multi-storey buildings under Strengthening Emergency Medical Services.

Similarly, government sector Multan and Faisalabad Institutes of Cardiology and Children’s Hospital, Multan were also established during his period as secretary health Punjab.

Being president of Thalassemia Society of Pakistan, Dr Javeria Manan also played a key role to run the the programme for the minor children in Punjab while Huma Maqsood was providing services for an international organization to produce trained human resource in corporate sector in the country.

In the resignation letters, the officials alleged that the behaviour of ex-officio directors of the company had forced them to tender resignation. They were unable to perform duties/services because of the undue interference of the ex-officio directors of the Board, they said.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2022