The rift between Sindh caretaker chief minister Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar and interim health minister Dr Saad Khalid Niaz has widened after the former held a meeting with representatives of different medical associations in the absence of the latter.
Dr Niaz said he was not invited to or even informed about the meeting chaired by Baqar on Tuesday that was attended by some office-bearers of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), the Young Doctors Association (YDA) and the Peoples Doctors Forum (PDF) and Society of Surgeons Pakistan (SSP).
Both ministers are at odds with each other over the procurement of four more robotic surgery systems worth Rs4.24 billion for the health facilities in the province. Dr Niaz believes the money should be spent on providing basic health facilities at hospitals. Baqar, however, argues that the funds for the robotic surgery systems were already allocated and released by the previous government through the provincial budget, so the caretaker set-up should not intervene in the matters decided by the previous administration.
An official handout issued by the CM House said Baqar met a group of doctors from different medical organisations, namely the PMA, the College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan, the YDA, the PDF and the SSP.
Dow University of Health Sciences Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Saeed Quraishy, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre Executive Director Prof Shahid Rasool and others were also part of the group.
Baqar discussed policy matters and issues related to the improvement of service delivery in public sector health institutions of the province. The meeting appreciated the consultative approach of the caretaker government, and suggested policy measures with an aim to serve the people in a better manner.
The interim CM assured the representatives of doctors’ associations that the issues related to service structure and budget would be resolved on a priority basis.
Meanwhile, Dr Niaz again ordered a forensic audit of all the public and private health institutions receiving public money as grants, saying that all health institutions must provide details of the public money they received from the government and how the billions of rupees were spent over the years.
“I had issued similar directives a few months ago, but nobody complied,” said the caretaker health minister. “We have reissued the directives to them to provide details of each and every penny of public money they spent.”