PESHAWAR: December 29: As per the top most priority of incumbent provincial government to give immediate relief and facilitate the people of Newly Merged Tribal Districts (NMDs), the Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan chaired an follow up meeting of health department wherein he directed for timely finalization of pending SNEs in order to functionalize 131 non functional health facilities of NMDs. He further directed to complete short listing of candidates till the end of January 2020 for recruitment of 60 District Monitoring Officers and Data Collection Assistants to monitor and ensure quality healthcare services to people of merged areas stating that regular and surprise monitoring of health service units on key performance indicators is essential. He also stressed the need to speed up recruitment against the vacant posts through testing agency directing that installation of modern equipments in 7 District Headquarter and 4 Tehsil Headquarter Hospitals of merged areas should be completed as soon as possible so that early diagnosis and treatment of the diseases could be ensured.
The meeting held at Chief Minister House Peshawar was attended by Minister for Health Hasham Inamullah, Advisor to CM on Education Ziaullah Bangash, Advisor to CM on merged Areas Ajmal Wazir, Additional Chief Secretary Shakeel Qadir, Principal Secretary to CM Shahab Ali Shah, MPAs from merged areas Naseer Wazir, Ghazan Jamal, Muhammad Shafique, Syed Iqbal Mian, Anwar Zeb Khan, Head of SSU Sahibzada Saeed and other relevant authorities.
The Chief Minister was briefed thoroughly about the progress made so far in health sector of merged areas. While briefing about the health facilities in merged Districts, it was revealed that there are total 1108 different health facilities in newly merged districts out of which 869 facilities are functional. Initiatives are underway to make functional the remaining non functional health facilities. Various schemes had already been included in the accelerated implementation plan and Annual Development Program for removal of deficiencies in 7 District Headquarters and 4 Tehsil Headquarter Hospitals, rehabilitation of basic infrastructure of DHQs/ Secondary level hospitals, provision of standard medical and non medical equipments, provision of quality medicines and recruitment of staff.
The Chief Minister directed that all the ongoing activities in health sector should be completed on fast track basis adding that realistic timelines should also be fixed for the purpose. Overall process for the provision of health facilities to tribal people needs to be speed up as per the priorities of government. There is no space for any delay in the projects related to health of people, he added. -PR
