Sindh asks GTZ to name foreigner as hospital head

Sindh asks GTZ to name foreigner as JPMC head

By our correspondent
PESHAWAR: After the reluctance of the NWFP government to appoint a foreigner as the head of one of its largest hospitals, the Sindh government has shown interest and asked the GTZ to shift the same post to the Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre (JPMC), Karachi, sources said. The GTZ, a Germany-based international cooperation agency, has, however, declined the request of the Sindh government to appoint a foreigner as chief executive at the JPMC Karachi. The post had been sanctioned by the GTZ for the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Peshawar. The Sindh government made a request after it became known that the NWFP government was reluctant to appoint a foreigner as the chief executive (CE) of the LRH. “We have now been asked by another government to transfer the expert to their hospital and but we are unable to do that,” a senior official with the GTZ told The News. He said Johann Willhelm Von Krause, who had been selected as CE LRH, had been sent to another country and now it wasn’t possible to call him back to Pakistan. Before the Sindh government, the government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) had also shown interest in getting the services of a foreigner as chief executive for Muzzarabad hospital, sources said. “If the NWFP government changed its mind by the end of the year or the next year, we would have to start the same approval process all over again, and we will select another one from foreign country,” he said. “We have postponed the project and maybe we will reconsider it within the next few months because we are still optimistic the project will be implemented very soon,” a Health Department official said. The idea of a foreigner CE was flouted by Health Department last year. Later, the provincial health minister consulted his party leadership and all agreed to it but afterwards it was postponed at the eleventh hour. It had been agreed that the NWFP government would pay Rs 150,000 per month to the newly-appointed chief executive of the LRH, while the rest of the amount was to be paid by the Centre for International Migration (CIM), another German organisation. The Health Department sent a summary to the chief minister over the issue in late March, which is still awaiting approval. The sources said the NWFP health minister reportedly received a call from Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, asking him not to appoint a German as the chief executive of the LRH. The sources said initially the minister convinced Qazi on the appointment of a German as it was in the public interest, but later the JI chief made another call and asked the minister to put the issue on the backburner. They said the professors of the LRH and some Parliamentarians, belonging to the MMA, had convinced the JI chief that the appointment of a foreigner to the coveted position would bring a bad name to the NWFP government. A few days ago, the provincial government appointed a professor to the aforesaid position, who is already the head of their department and now he will work on both posts at the same time. Sources at the GTZ said the government’s recurrent expenditure on the LRH, with a staff 2,500, was $6 million per year, but the institution’s performance was declining day by day. It was also learnt that Johann Willhelm Von Krause also visited LRH and spent two days there. Later, he gave a detailed briefing to health minister and the health secretary, asking them to give him a free hand if appointed as the chief executive. That time the minister agreed to his demand and had told him that he was ready to do everything for the betterment of this largest hospital. The minister had agreed to give him full powers in order to make the hospital service-oriented. But in the end, both the minister and the GTZ faced embarrassment, the sources said.