MULTAN-The Punjab Health Professional Alliance (PHPA) threatened warned the government that the paramedical staff working at all health facilities of Multan district will abandon polio vaccination drive and go on strike from January 15 if the hospitals of Multan are handed over to a private company.
Addressing a news conference here, the office bearers of the alliance Maqbool Ahmad Gujjar, AD Kanwal, Rukhsana Anwar, Adnan Leghari, Tahir Saleem and others said that the government had planned to privatize entire health sector in the province but the health workers from some districts, which were to be taken over by the company in the beginning, moved court and got stay order. They further pointed out that the health workers from Multan had also got a stay order from the LHC Multan Bench against the privatisation. “Our workers are fully participating in polio eradication drive and other campaigns. If any attempt is made to handover the health outlets to the company, we’ll go on strike,” they added. They said that the rulers’ plan behind privatising the health sector was to oblige their favourites and mint money. They pointed out that the private companies fleeced public by charging heave fee for providing healthcare to them as a result of which the number of patients visiting hospitals run by these companies went seriously down.
They claimed that the private companies running health outlets declared the permanent workers surplus and recruited daily wages and contract employees to replace them. They said that the company deprived thousands of workers of their employment. They warned that the entire health system would collapse in Punjab if the government continued to pursue its policies.