The unnecessary delay by the health managers in addressing the ongoing row among the doctors and other medical staffers regarding new and old service structures at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Monday led to a strike called by the Joint Action Committee of Regular Employees of Federal Government Hospitals. The Monday’s work boycott again caused the patients to suffer.
The Out Patient Departments (OPDs) of the public sector hospitals of Islamabad remained closed as nurses, senior doctors, paramedical and non-medical employees staged a demonstration against new service structure.
The Joint Action Committee (JAC), comprising the Nursing Association, paramedical and non-medical employees of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Federal Government Services Hospital (FGSH), also known as Polyclinic and National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine (NIRM), staged the demonstration outside the Parliament House.
The protesters were chanting slogans against the federal government and Cabinet Division Secretary Nargis Sethi. They were demanding more facilities within the Basic Pay Scale (BPS) and rejected the ‘Career Structure for Health Professionals’ (CSHP).
This strike left the patients who visited the federal hospitals in city on Monday to suffer as most of the patients returned without any treatment or medication. The protest march started from the PIMS where hundreds of employees of all the public sector hospitals had gathered by the margining and marched towards the Parliament House.
Addressing the angry medics, the JAC spokesperson, Manzar Abbas Naqvi, said they would foil all the ‘nefarious’ designs of Nargis Sethi who was planning to make the PIMS an autonomous body and get the CSHP ordinance passed secretly. He said the term for the old ordinance had ended and there it had no legality any longer.
Another member of the JAC, Gul Nargis, said they wanted facilities within the BPS and not under the CSHP, which is also known as new Health Pay Scale (HPS). She said they would resist any move to make the PIMS an autonomous body and warned the privatisation could lead to massive corruption, favoritism, and poor quality of treatment at the hospital.
She said they wanted risk-allowance, a time-frame for promotions and increase in salaries like employees of other departments being run under the federal government.
Nursing Association PIMS Secretary Sadia Bashir said it was an injustice with the employees of lower cadres. She said all the employees had an equal role to play in their respective fields.
Earlier the Joint Action Committee had also written a letters to the chief justice, president, prime Minister and Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) secretary to take notice of the ‘discriminatory attitude’ of the administration of all federal hospitals including the PIMS, Polyclinic and NIRMS.
According to the letter, the administration, especially PIMS Executive Director Mehmood Jamal, who wanted the implementation of CSHP, was displacing the regular employees from their positions simply because they were seeking benefits under the BSP.
“Similarly the ED has stopped the promotions of the senior doctors and other regular employees who were pro-BPS scheme but the doctors sided with Jamal on HPS are being awarded promotions”, the letter said.
However the lawful and peaceful request of more than 5000 regular civil servants (who opted to remain in BPS) serving in three Federal Health Institutions (PIMS, FGPC and NIRM) was not given any heed, which caused frustration & unrest and resulted in serious reactions by the regular BPS employees.
Dr Taqqi Anwer, a representative of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) that too opted for the CHSP, told Pakistan Today, “We have nothing to do with the ongoing strike at the PIMS and we demand the implementation of CHSP which is near its finalisation.”
He said that they strongly condemned the propaganda against the doctor’s community and warned ‘the black sheep’ within the PIMS administration against hatching conspiracies against the CSHP. It may be recalled that earlier a similar protest campaign by the doctors continued for one and a half month last year.
