PESHAWAR: The health department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is considering revision of rules to grant age relaxation to doctors applying for 248 management cadre positions advertised recently for filling up 600 vacant posts of district specialists.

Adviser to Chief Minister on Health Ihtisham Ali told Dawn that they were considering the proposal to enable the doctors to appear in the test. “We need more management cadre doctors to improve governance and ensure better health delivery system,” he said.

Officials said that the decision was made on the request of Provincial Doctors Association (PDA) to allow doctors to pear in the examination to be conducted for the posts by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Service Commission (PSC).

According to them, as per advertisement the age limit has been fixed at 32 that will negatively impact many medics due to their age. “Rules are being revised on the directives of health adviser to accommodate the doctors up to 37 years and paper work in this regard has been started,” they said.

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These rules were framed when the fresh positions in management cadre were in BPS-17 but now they are inducted in BPS-18, therefore, the department has decided to amend the rules to allow doctors to take the examination for selection.

Officials said that it was established rule that if any person, who was in government service for two years on regular basis, should be given age relaxation of 10 years but the revision in rules was required to facilitate the doctors were not in government service.

Additionally, health adviser has also ordered filing up of 600 vacant positions of district specialists to provide better services to patients in local hospitals to lessen burden on tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar and other cities of the province.

“These specialists would also be recruited through PSC for which the deputy secretary and relevant section officers have been asked to expedite work. The officers have been instructed to send request for recruitment of specialists to PSC,” officials said.

PDA secretary information Dr Salim Khan Yousafzai told Dawn that they were thankful to the health adviser for acceleration of recruitment process of management cadre doctors. He said that it would improve healthcare in the province.

“The department is also collecting data about doctors and those fulfilling the required criteria would be made district specialists,” he said.

The PDA leader said that those posts had been lying vacant since long but the present health adviser took notice of the issue, which would not only benefit doctors but patients would also be its beneficiaries.

He said that there were more than 900 qualified doctors having postgraduate qualification in different specialists but they were working as medical officers in health department. He said that government needed to convert those seats along with the doctors to specialist’s cadre so that health system might improve.

The health department has also directed the authorities concerned to prepare working paper for promotion of BPS-17 general cadre doctors and send their cases for approval to provincial selection board. PDA has been supporting government in its endeavours to improve patients’ care and recruitment of more management cadre doctors and filling up specialists’ position was a step forward in this regard.

Dr Salim said that currently tertiary care hospitals were overcrowded by patients from different districts that affected the care of patients requiring highly-specialised treatment but once the district and tehsil level hospitals got the services of specialists, patients would go there and burden on tertiary hospital would recede.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2025