Government Hospitals into big time wage theft

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Dr. Saad Niaz                                                    23 Jan 2024

Minister,  Department of Health

6th Floor, Sindh Secretariat Building no.1,

Sharae Kamal Ata -Turk, Karachi

Dear Sir,

Ref. Dawn January 23, 2024 report of the unethical, devious  and illegal behaviour of the Health Secretary in palming off tax payers money to a private NGO.  I deeply appreciate your stand on this issue and your insistence that the recipient organisations must display all financial data on their websites before they receive a single penny from the government.

I also deeply appreciate your earlier stand of focusing on primary healthcare for millions, instead of spending Rs40 billion on purchase of robots for surgery –  that would be beneficial only to a small number.

I would like to respectfully make 3 specific suggestions that you could possibly implement or order even in the last few days of your tenure.

  1. Kindly have all major government hospitals such as JPMC, NICVD, Civil Hospital, Abbasi Shaheed etc to immediately display the following data on their website.
  2. Total number of regular employees
  3. Total number of contracted or 3rd party employees (such as sanitation workers and private security guards).
  4. Hospital’s total yearly budget and total salary budget.
  5. Salary and perks of top ten officials of the hospital (include all allowances, car, fuel, electricity, staff etc )
  6. Salary (in hand) received by sanitation workers and security guards (and not the fat payment given to contractor)
  7. Where does the hospital release its sewage (Nullah, pond, sea, open area etc)
  8. Kindly be apprised that the 3 major hospitals JPMC, Abbasi Shaheed and the Civil Hospitals are themselves engaged in serious human rights violations, exploitation and wage theft by hugely underpaying (as compared to min legal wages) the sanitation workers and pvt security guards. Kindly have this stopped on urgent basis.
  9. The Sindh Health ministry should display on its website the amount it has given to any private NGO / organisation from the public fund and the compelling reason for doing so.

Respectfully,

Naeem Sadiq