Punjab Labour Minister Raja Ashfaq Sarwar on Sunday said that labourers were the industry’s backbone and the government was spending a huge amount of Rs 7 billion for the provision of modern health facilities for the labourers and their families.
Ashfaq said the government was attaching a high priority status to the health of the working class as a healthy labourer could contribute vigorously to projects in both the public and the private sectors.
He said patients suffering from Hepatitis C were being treated with the conventional interferon procedure but with a view of accurately facilitating patients, the social security department had decided to make arrangements for Interferon services which would normally cost a patient Rs 314,000.
He said the labour department would establish two medical colleges during the current fiscal where 50 percent seats would be reserved for the children of labourers, adding that the department would bear their educational expenses.
Furthermore, Ashfaq said that satellite clinics had been set up to provide specialised treatment on the doorsteps of the labourers, adding that “Three mammography machines worth Rs 7,851 million had been installed in social security hospitals at Lahore and Rawalpindi for better detection of breast cancer whereas a new CT scan machine worth Rs 7,019 million had been placed at the Gujranwala Hospital”.
