Karachi: The meeting of the Dispute Resolution Committee failed to address grievances of the faculty members of devolved federal health ministry employees serving at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), National Institute of Child Health (NICH) and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) Karachi, it’s learnt. 

The meeting was held at the committee hall of the JPMC on Saturday afternoon under the chair of Rehan Iqbal Baloch, secretary health Sindh in attendance with ED JPMC Prof. Shahid Rasool, Special Secretary Health Farhan Ghani, other officials from provincial health department. Special secretary and deputy secretary represented the ministry of national health and regulations in the meeting online.  Sources told that meeting notice was not sent to faculty members and teaching staff specially from the admin department of the JPMC to keep these employees away from the meeting and hide their grievances from this forum on behest of some key health officials.  Number of faculty members and teaching staff requesting anonymity told this scribe that JPMC administration has not informed faculty members and teaching staff to keep them away from the meeting, however some of teaching members went to join meeting when got this info in the morning.

But they couldn’t share their grievances in presence of federal ministry representatives as they already went offline when they were called in the meeting. This meeting was for the three federally devolved institutions but it they were astonished to see Prof. Amjad Siraj, VC JSMU in the meeting which is also a question, they further told.  Federal ministry representatives asked the hospital officials about the participation of faculty and staff as there were called none at that time. Even not the head of department was present at that time. After short a while ministry officials went offline with direction to hospital admin to ensure staff presence with their grievances as a prior agenda and hence the meeting postponed, sources privy to the meeting proceedings told. Federal deputy secretary Saleem Cheema confirmed that no faculty member were present in the meeting thus no grievance could be heard. This meeting will be held again soon with the participation of all affectees, he added.

  When contacted Prof. Amjad Siraj told that he was invited by the government and further should be asked from the Secretary Health. When contacted Prof. Shahid Rasool, ED JPMC told that meeting was very positive. Allegations of meeting failure are not true as some faculty members came and others sent letters that they want relief from the court, he added. Secretary Health Sindh and chair of the meeting Rehan Baloch was contacted for his comment but he didn’t reply.