NAB team inspects Peshawar LRH affairs

PESHAWAR: The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Monday visited Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s oldest and largest public health facility the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar where the hospital administration gave them a briefing and took them to different locations of the hospital.

Senior hospital officials told The News the NAB investigators got impressed by the briefing. “It was neither a raid nor a surprise visit as propagated by some doctors. It was a planned visit as the NAB had informed the hospital administration a few days ago about their visit to the hospital,” said an LRH official. LRH Hospital Director, Brig (retd) Dr Abrar Khan received the NAB team and briefed them about the Medical Teaching Institute (MTI), hospital budget, number of staffers and facilities given to patients. “The NAB team neither seized any record nor did give any intention regarding any arrests,” said an official on condition of anonymity. He said it was the LRH where the MTI law had practically been implemented that helped change hospital interns on patient care, quality of services as well as accountability of the staff.

The five-member NAB team rather than visiting the new art building preferred to inspect old parts of the hospital and went to the Cardiology Block and dialysis facility, set up in one of the oldest portions of the hospital. Ziaullah Toru led the combined investigation team of the NAB.

Meanwhile, senior NAB officials said they would continue investigations against the hospital, particularly in connection with utilization of budget, procurement of equipment, medicines as well as staff. “The hospital is given a Rs 5 billion budget of which Rs 3.5 is spent on salaries. It is the largest hospital with 2,000 beds and we thought they could have collected a handsome revenue,” he said, leading anonymity. It s not possible to collect all details in three hours but there was no issue in provision of services to patients as well as availability of medicines and presence of staff. “It is a story of the past nine years and billions of rupees. We got details of the hospital staff and will investigate if the hospital really needed such a large staff,” he said. The NAB team decided to investigate salaries and check if they were as per market rules. According to the NAB team, the hospital was procuring medicines worth millions of rupees but it didn’t have barcode.

“The LRH was not the only hospital where the medicine lacked barcode. We visited hospitals in Nowshera, Abbottabad, Haripur and Mardan, but none of them had barcodes on their medicines,” the NAB official revealed. The NAB team has gave a 10-day time to the LRH administration to ensure barcode on their medicines and vowed to visit them again.