Resignations saga of KTH BoG members takes new twist

PESHAWAR: The resignations saga of members of the Board of Governors of Khyber Teaching Hospital took yet another twist on Wednesday as Health Minister Taimur Saleem Khan Jhagra accused a government officer of issuing dismissal order of the entire board without instructions of the chief minister.

However, Taimur Jhagra, who also holds the portfolio of finance, said the officer concerned, a section officer in the Health Department, had been suspended. He added that further disciplinary action against him has been proposed for his negligence that caused an embarrassment to the government.

“The chief minister has suspended the officer and initiated an inquiry to determine the motive of his actions, and the leak, on a summary where the explicit instructions given were ignored. Hopefully, this will be a test case for the effectiveness of such inquiries,” the minister said.

The Health Department on Monday issued a notification that the chief minister had accepted resignations of members of the Board of Governors (BoG) of Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).

On Tuesday, the government issued another notification, saying “the chief minister has allowed the KTH board to continue its work for three months till another board is appointed to replace them.”

It caused embarrassment to the government as most of the faculty members in KTH termed it a joke, asking why the government accepted resignations of the board members if they had to work for three months. Some of them didn’t believe the board would be replaced, saying some powerful non-elected people in the government were patronising them.

It was obvious as the government had equally held the BoG responsible for the loss of seven human lives due to lack of oxygen gas in the hospital on December 6, 2020, though the same board had already conducted a preliminary investigation and suspended certain employees of the hospital.

The board members, headed by senior paediatrician, Prof Nadeem Khawar, had tendered their resignations at the time and offered to quit if the government felt their performance was not satisfactory. The government had then directed them to continue their work.

It seemed this episode hurt Taimur Jhagra as he was quite critical of the government machinery and took to Twitter to express his anger and explain his side of the story.

“This is a classic example of why significant reform is required in the way government administrative machinery works. An entire board was dismissed through a notification by a section officer disregarding the instructions of the chief minister,” he said.

He added that the section officer claimed to have misread the summary, and issued a notification in a hurry.

“The notification, against procedure, was issued without review by the secretary of the department. And astonishingly, the notification was leaked immediately after being issued,” said Taimur Jhagra.

The thing that hurt him more was sharing of the notification with the media as he was apparently trying to facilitate the present board to continue its work without being replaced as he was satisfied with its work.

“I don’t understand why the minister concerned took it so seriously as there was nothing false in the story. It is 200 percent correct that the board members had resigned and the chief minister accepted their resignations but wanted them to work till another board is notified. Then what’s wrong,” a senior government official argued when this correspondent reached him for his view on the issue.

Taimur Jhagra told The News that the health department has become a den of mafias and they don’t allow them to work for the public interest.

He said the board members had submitted their resignations in December 2020 and an immediate decision was taken that the resignations would be accepted, but the board would be allowed to continue until a new one is selected.

He said the summary for the new board has been sent to the chief minister and he had approved it.

Taimur Jhagra said the present board had done a good job in very difficult circumstances and it ought to be appreciated.