PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court on Thursday summoned the chief executive officer of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Care Commission for responding to a contempt plea accusing the commission of not implementing the court’s judgement about fixation of rates for laboratories, hospitals and private clinics.

A bench consisting of Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Syed Arshad Ali issued the order while hearing the contempt plea filed by Advocate Saifullah Muhib Kakakhel, requesting the court to take action against the respondents including the HCC chief executive for non-compliance of a judgment of the court delivered in 2019.

Next date of hearing will be fixed later. Respondents in the contempt petition are HCC chief executive officer, provincial health secretary and director general health services.

The respondents have also submitted comments in the case stating that in 2022 the commission had made recommendations for fixation of rates of different categories of laboratories, hospitals and clinics but due to non-availability of cabinet approval the same couldn’t be implemented.

Petitioner says court’s order not implemented for fixation of rates for medical facilities

They said that the matter would now be placed before the present provincial cabinet for approval.

Mr Saifullah argued that no step had been taken to make a policy for uniformity of the rates. He stated that every laboratory had its own rates and there was no check and balance by HCC so they were looting people.

He requested the court to take action against the HCC chief executive and responsible officials of health department.

The petitioner stated that he had filed a petition in 2017, seeking court’s orders for HCC to regulate the rates of public as well as private sector health facilities and also make it mandatory for private laboratories, clinics and hospitals to display service charges at visible place on their premises.

He said that a bench headed by the then chief justice Waqar Ahmad Seth had accepted that petition in Nov 2019 and ordered HCC to fix and bring uniformity in the rates of all laboratories, clinics and hospitals within three months.

He pointed out that earlier uniform rates for dengue, MP and complete blood count tests were fixed by HCC by issuing a public notice over a petition popularly known as dengue virus case.

The petitioner said that the act was highly beneficial for the people, who couldn’t afford treatment, tests and medicines required. He claimed that respondents had not been implementing the order of high court regarding fixation of rates of different hospitals and laboratories due to some influential hospitals in the private sector.

He said that court had ordered that HCC was not made merely to issue licence but also to regulate rates and all other work related to regulation of public and private health sector for benefit of people.

“No doubt, charges of doctors and laboratories depend on expenses, staff, location and equipment used but for this reason, they cannot be left to charge people unbridled fee,” the high court had ruled in its earlier judgment.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2024