PESHAWAR: Administrators of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s medical education institutions are optimistic that the PTI-led government, which was just elected, will resolve their financial problems, which have resulted in medicine shortages and postponed wage payments.
Since Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s government ended in January of last year, ten MTIs have been in financial difficulty since the caretaker government that followed didn’t give them the money they needed to run their affairs.
The first PTI government in the province, which enacted the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act in 2015, claimed the initiative would provide financial and administrative autonomy to public sector teaching hospitals and the medical and dental colleges they are affiliated with, as well as prevent bureaucratic and political meddling in their affairs.
In the past, the health secretariat oversaw the hospitals’ operations and made all of the decisions about them. The health secretariat has very limited influence over the boards of governors that oversee MTIs, which were established as a result of the MTIRA.
Due to the financial crisis, they experience medicine shortages and delayed salary payments.
“When the caretakers regained power in January 2023, we [MTIs] have been facing serious financial issues. We used to have enough funds in the PTI’s first and second governments because the then ruling party owned us and ensured smooth cash flow to us,” the dean of a Peshawar MTI told Dawn.
In contrast to other government employees who received their paychecks at the beginning of each month, he added that the institution’s staff received theirs 15 days later.
To the great distress of patients, who must purchase them from the market, he added, “MTIs are also short of medicines and disposable items.”
The dean claimed that due to a lack of life-saving medications for patients admitted with serious injuries or illnesses, conditions in the MTI’s accident and emergency departments were “really bad.”
Another MTI’s medical director, who asked to remain anonymous, told Dawn that the organization had been trying unsuccessfully to get the finance and health departments to release money each month so that it could pay staff salaries, buy visitor medications, and buy supplies for maintaining and cleaning the building.
He said pay monies were released belatedly by the finance department.
He claimed that “the caregivers showed no interest in MTIs that exacerbated our problems.”
The medical director expressed his hope that the newly elected administration, led by PTI leader Ali Amin Gandapur, will help those medical teaching institutions by providing them with the regular quarterly cash that the PTI government used to.
Dawn was informed by another MTI director that the caretakers had replaced the PTI-appointed members of the BoG in every MTI and had even attempted to abolish the MTIRA, but that attempt had failed because legislation could only be repealed by the provincial legislature.
He claimed that in response to pressure from his superior, the chief minister, to remove MTI BoGs, even a caretaker health minister resigned.
The health minister made the case that the abolition of the BoG is a policy choice that an elected government, not caretakers, is authorized by law to make.
He claimed that although nearly every MTI in the province was facing financial difficulties, things would probably get better after the new administration, which would include PTI leaders, took “charge of matters and ensured the release of adequate funds.”
According to the director, medical experts have left their positions at MTI thus far.
He added that an MTI intensive care specialist had taken it quits two months prior.
“Most MTIs are in dire need of funding, which will probably be released upon the nomination of the next health minister—possibly from the PTI,” he stated.
