Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has decided to establish satellites of National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in all the divisional headquarters and in the first phase its satellite will be established in Mirpurkhas.
He made this decision, presiding over a meeting held at the CM House to resolve all the outstanding issues of NICH on Monday. The Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Adviser to the CM Murtaza Wahab, CM's Principal Secretary Sajid Jamal Abro, Sindh government's Secretary Finance Najam Shah, Secretary Health Saeed Awan, Director NICH Syed Jamal Raza, Additional Secretary to the CM Fayaz Jatoi and other concerned officers attended the meeting.
On the issue, the chief minister was told status quo has ruled since 2011. He was told that neither fresh recruitment nor promotions to suitable qualified professionals had been made whereas no equipment had been added. Therefore, the NICH was facing serious problems to further improve its services.
Despite sanctioned strength of 1035 medical and paramedical staff, only 674 are working at present with huge dearth of staff members at the NICH.
It hastened the chief minister to approve promotions of 43 qualified and experienced professionals and also approved new posts of 150 medical and paramedical staff members.
He directed secretaries Health and Finance to have a meeting with the NICH director to work out a detailed SNE so that new positions could be created for efficient functioning of the institute.
Murad Shah said he wanted the NICH work on the pattern of NICVD under an independent board of directors that would deal with all its administrative and financial matters and run the satellite centres as well.
He said that the first NICH satellite centre would be established in Mirpurkhas division so that it would work efficiently for the entire division, with a particularly focus on Tharparkar to control mother and child nutrition issues there.
The chief minister was told that the NICH had an old generator with lower capacity and also needed an MRI machine. He approved purchase of new generator and the MRI Machine and directed health department to move a summary for formal approval. He also directed the finance department to release the budget of NICH so that it could meet all its expenditures, including maintenance of equipment, medicines and others.
Murad Shah directed the director of 500-bed NICH to submit a detailed plan for its expansion. It was pointed out that the NICH had very limited staff accommodation facilities and most of the houses were occupied by unauthorised people. The chief minister directed Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah to vacate NICH staff accommodation from unauthorised people through district administration.
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