A majority of the medical and paramedical staff of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Institute (PIMS) has rejected the new service structure for doctors, which has resulted in dividing the hospital’s administration and hence the fate of new ordinance hangs in the balance.
Out of total 3,100 medic and paramedical staff, a majority of them has rejected the new health personnel scale (HPS) and they prefer to remain in the old service structure of basic pay scale (BPS).
Meanwhile, the hospital administration has also divided into two groups as some top officials perceive the new service structure beneficial while some think it is not.
An official in the administration of PIMS told Pakistan Today, requesting not to be named, that the PIMS Executive Director Mehood Jamal is in favour of new service structure as this ordinance provide him backdoors to legitimatise his current post which is otherwise illegal according to the old service structure. “According to the rules, the ED should have an MBBS degree, Post Graduate Higher Diploma, and Master’s degree in Public Health or Health Administration or in Hospital Management, but the ED who is in-charge here, only has an MBBS degree and have no other relevant degrees to hold this seat,” he said.
He said the new ordinance was designed in consultation with the ED and no other stakeholder from the hospital was consulted in the draft making process.
Another doctor, who also wished not to be named, told Pakistan Today that while the matter was in the Islamabad High Court, the ED was pressuring the employees, especially the doctors, to agree with his stance against the BPS.
“He is using all the tactics to stop us from expressing our feelings and raise our voice for our right. Chief justice, prime minister and president should intervene to stop him from such illegal and undemocratic practices,” he appealed.
He said that according to the law, the Cabinet Division could not pass any ordinance without consulting relevant organisations such as the Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) or Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), but over service structure issue, all those relevant bodies had been bypassed “only to serve some people’s vested interests”. Dr Taqqi Anwer, a representative of YDA (PIMS), told this scribe that they had held meetings with the Cabinet Secretary Nargis Sethi and asked her to release the salaries and arrears so that the doctors might be convinced that they would benefit from the new service structure. He denied the allegations of pressuring the doctors by the ED Mehmood Jamal.
It is important to mention the new HPS notification was the result of doctors’ two months of strikes and the ongoing conflict within the PIMS administration could again lead to a another spell of strikes or protests that would make poor patients suffer.
Despite several attempts by this scribe to contact PIMS ED Mehmood Jamal, the official was not available for comments.