Policy Board takes note of issues in MTIs

PESHAWAR: Taking note of the serious issues in the medical teaching institutions (MTIs), the Policy Board has directed the Boards of Governors (BoGs) of all 10 such institutions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to furnish the information about all the employees occupying administrative positions.

It is the first such attempt by the Policy Board, headed by Dr Nausherwan Burki, the architect of the MTI Act, as until now he had focused on the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) in Peshawar, where he has been chairman of the BoG since the implementation of the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act (MTIRA) in 2015.

In most MTIs, important executive positions are held by irrelevant people, mostly on an acting charge basis, or court stay orders.

Some have been holding these positions since 2015 and are so strong that they can’t be replaced easily.

Also, there is no uniformity in the MTIs in terms of the salary package of their employees, particularly those holding executive positions, dean, medical director, hospital director, director of nursing, director of finance, and various managers.

In some MTIs, employees occupying executive positions are being paid high wages, and that’s why the doctors are always complaining that the managers in the MTIs are paid better salaries than them -- the service providers.

Except for two or three, most of the executive positions in the MTIs are being run on a contract basis.

The Policy Board has sent a notification, its copy is available with The News, to all the 10 MTIs, including Lady Reading Hospital, Hayatabad Medical Complex, Khyber Teaching Hospital and the Peshawar Institute of Cardiology in Peshawar, Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad, Mufti Mahmood Hospital, Dera Ismail Khan, Mardan Medical Complex MTI, Mardan, Qazi Hussain Ahmad Medical Complex, Nowshera, Bacha Khan Medical Complex, Swabi and Khalifa Gul Nawaz Hospital, Bannu.

“Respected Board of Governors, I am directed to communicate that the Policy Board has been informed that in some Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institutions, the secretary to the Board of Governors has been hired at job description and salary levels far higher than commensurate with those laid down in the MTI Act,” it was stated in the notification.

“The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms (Amendment) Act, 2020, specifically states [Chapter 111, Section 6 (10)]: The Secretary to the Board shall be an employee of the Board, who shall perform all secretarial and office functions of the Board at the direction of the Chairperson; and would be responsible for recording minutes of the Board meetings, convening Board meetings, carrying out communication with all Board members, and all other functions as may be prescribed by the Board or the Chairperson.”

It further explained that it is essentially a secretarial function, at the level of administrative assistant, not an executive position and hence the status and salary would be that appropriate to a secretary, albeit a highly qualified one.

According to officials, in some MTIs, the MTI Act has wrongly been interpreted, and secretaries of the board are using official cars, fuel, and residences.