DASKA - The newly-developed civil hospital has been facing acute shortage of medicines, adding to patients woes, though the provincial government has spent Rs160 million on the construction of new building of the hospital. The locals were of the view that only this grand building was not enough to provide health and medical facilities to patients, as the provincial government seems to be unable to overcome shortage of the medicines, due to which the all the indoor and outdoor patients were forced to purchase from the bazaar. The management claimed that the hospital had been facing shortage of medicines and the health department did not provided the medicines despite repeated appeals by the hospital administration. The situation came to light when a senior journalist visit the hospital. Patients, including Sakeena Bibi, Muhammad Akram, Allah Rakha and Muhammad Iqbal, said at male and female surgical wards of Daska Civil Hospital that the hospital management gives them only the analgesic pills and syringes without injection. They said they had to buy medicine from bazaar. Nasir Mehmood, another patient, said that he has not purchased the necessary medicines worth of Rs2,500 from the bazaar so far while the majority of outdoor patients also revealed such story of unavailability of government medicines at Daska Civil Hospital. When contacted, Medical Superintendent Dr Sajjad Nabi Sayyan said the hospital management purchased the different medicines worth of Rs2.5 million for the hospital to provide free medicines to patients, and the quality of these medicines was being checked by the Drugs Laboratory Lahore and the management was waiting for the laboratory test report for starting distribution of the medicines to patients. Pharmacist Muneeb Ahmed also said that the laboratory test report of these medicines was still awaited. But, both of them (Medical Superintendent and Pharmacist) could not give any satisfactory answer of the question regarding the delay in the report. Apna Rozgar scheme to help overcome unemployment: The provincial government has successfully started implementation on Rs4.5 billion mega Apna Rozgar Programme for providing employment opportunities to the poor, needy and oppressed people across Punjab under the dynamic supervision of Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif. Special Assistant to Punjab Chief Minister Mansha Ullah Butt stated this while addressing a meeting of the party workers held here on Monday. He said that Apna Rozgar Programme will help create a large number of employment job opportunities in Punjab, besides, opening new vistas for socioeconomic and human development. He said that the provincial government was taking all out effective steps for raising the living standard of people by ensuring smooth provision of all massing basic facilities at their doorsteps. He said that Punjab CM Shahbaz Sharif had materialise the dream of doing small business of the middle class people by launching Yellow Cab Taxi Scheme, as it would be another noble and honourable employment scheme, as all the Pakistani made vehicles have been inducted in the scheme with a sole aim of providing maximum job opportunities to the unemployed youths, enabling them to earn what they can and become the economically self reliant, in this regard.