Sherry Rehman opposes federal government’s takeover of Sindh’s hospitals

Islamabad: Opposing Federal government’s takeover on Sindh’s hospitals, the Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate, Senator Sherry Rehman said Sindh’s National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), National Institute of Child Health (NICH) and Jinnah Sindh Medical University are renowned all over Asia for their world class care.

She said people from all over the country come there for treatment since there are no other hospitals in the country which offer the same high quality of care and treatment but plans are being made by the federal government to takeover them.

“Employees are already feeling threatened that they will go down the same route as PIMS. This is completely illegal under the 18th amendment. Service delivery which is with the province can not be taken over by the federal government. As it stands the service delivery record of PTI in health and education is abysmal. You only need to see the state of KP institutions to understand that. Why do they want to get into something they are not capable of handling? Why do they want to damage the quality of these hospitals?” she questioned.

She said, “Sindh is attracting doctors from the private sector by paying them more and giving them incentives. Instead of making the provinces more independent during the pandemic, this government wants to take down the only functional hospitals in the country. We strongly condemn these attempts by the federal government to takeover Sindh’s hospitals”.

Speaking on the MDCAT issue, Rehman said, “121,000 students are protesting against the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) over their abrupt decision to ‘centralise’ the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) from this year. How can they conduct exams without consulting the province and the syllabus? All rules have been violated to conduct these exams. The students have said that in the MDCAT paper they were given questions out of the syllabus. They also claimed that the names on the result certificates given to them were incorrect. Their degrees will not be accepted anywhere and their future is at risk”.

“PMDC employees have been neglected and no one is taking responsibility. There’s news that someone is running PMC from abroad via Skype without any rules & regulations. How can a person sitting abroad run a key medical institution? Even the courts have said that it will run according to certain laws but the same laws are openly being violated. Pakistani doctors are acknowledged worldwide and their preliminary degree by PMDC held a lot of value and credibility. But now PMDC has been destroyed by this government,” she added.

She said, “If PMC is not capable of handling such a complicated exam then why is it controlling this process? There is no transparency in their structure and cronies are being awarded. Sole appointing authority is always under the board’s control but ironically, when it comes to the PMC, this authority lies with the PM. Why is Tabahi Sarkar bulldozing all our institutions? Any government state institute and regulatory body which was once working, whether it’s PIA, PTDC or PMDC, is now bulldozed by this incompetent government. Why is merit being ignored to award cronies? Meanwhile, another construction amnesty has been given to business cronies through a Presidential Ordinance, while the government is unable to meet their target for collecting tax. This only happens when the institutions are weak”.

The Parliamentary Leader of the PPP in the Senate, Senator Sherry Rehman concluded by saying that, “We demand that an inquiry must be conducted and a committee should be appointed to investigate this matter. This issue should be referred to the committee with a time frame”.