The government is set to start a fresh survey at a cost of Rs 5 billion to identify the people below the poverty line and bring them into safety net in a bid to reduce poverty. This was stated by Secretary Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Shaista Sohail while briefing the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, which met here on Monday under the chairmanship of Senator Talha Mehmood.
Shaista Sohail said that the government is set to increase the budget for Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal from Rs 5 billion to Rs 7.9 billion. Senator Rubina Khalid said that instead of spending Rs 5 billion on survey, the government must allocate the amount to Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal which is doing an excellent job in the field of health and education. She also expressed serious concern over non-regularisation of the employees of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) since long.
Shaista Sohail said that BIPS is spending Rs 124 billion to reduce poverty and this amount is being paid to the woman, adding that the government will consider the regularising of the BISP employees at the right time. The panel discussed the matter of regularisation of contractual medical staff of Cardiac Centre and Bone Marrow Transplant Centre of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Islamabad and other issues.
The panel also directed the Ministry of National Health Services and Regulations to extend the contracts of doctors and other medical staff working at the Cardiac Centre of PIMS. The panel said that staffers have been working there since long and the government has significantly invested in training of doctors and other staff, so, the present staff of Bone Marrow Centre and Cardiac Centre PIMS must be made permanent instead of recruiting fresh people.
The health secretary told the committee that they have regularised employees in basic pay scale (BPS) from grade-1 to grade-15. Cases of employees above BPS-15 have been sent to the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) as per the directives of the Supreme Court (SC). He added that doctors who have been working in the centre for years would be given additional marks in the exams. However, only two of the nine employees who appeared for the FPSC exam cleared it.
At this, Mehmood remarked that it is unfair not to regularise the doctors who have spent 15 years of their lives working for the betterment of patients. He asked on what basis Dr Shahid Malik was regularised, adding no new doctor could ever replace the experience gained by the doctors working there. The executive director PIMS said that he had informed the court that the centre could not operate without these doctors.
The state minister for parliamentary affairs said that the experience of these doctors should be utilised, adding that the issue could be easily resolved if the related minister appears in the next meeting. On the public complaint of Shehzadi Zainab regarding the ownership of the land of Flashman's Hotel in Rawalpindi, the committee on the recommendation of Senator Javed Abbasi decided to summon the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials and a representative of Ministry of Law and Justice to get a detailed briefing on the subject.
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