Essential Services Act: Doctors continue protest on third day in Peshawar
Health Employees Coordination Council has also formed an eight-member committee.
PESHAWAR (Dunya News) – Patients are facing problems as doctors and paramedical staff continued strike against imposition of Essential Services Act in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) hospitals on third day.
The doctors have stopped working in all the wards except emergency in various hospitals including Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, irking the patients who also staged sit-in.
Health Employees Coordination Council has also formed an eight-member committee including seniors of doctors and nursing staff.
The delegation will meet Chief Minister and will inform them their all demands regarding restoration of post-graduate medical institute, health allowance to employees and betterment of hospitals.
The paramedics have threatened to extend strike to the whole province if their demands were not accepted.
Earlier, Chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan clarified that the Essential Services Act was imposed by Peshawar High Court (PHC) not government.
Imran Khan stated that the local administration is reforming the hospitals not privatizing them. He assured that the functioning of government hospitals is moving towards betterment in KP.
The protest came after PTI-led KP government enforced Essential Services Act 1958 at all the government teaching hospitals across the province on Monday.
It is said the step has been taken to prevent protests by the doctors against the implementation of KP Medical Teaching Institute Reforms Act, 2015.
The move came as a surprise for many in the province as the PTI was opposing the Essential Services Act s enforcement in the PIA by the federal government.
Provincial Health Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai said the employees failing to comply with the laws passed by the KP Assembly should resign.
