By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The health minister called for eliminating permanent civil-service positions at government hospitals, proposing instead that a chief executive recruited from the private sector be given full hiring and firing authority — a sweeping restructuring plan floated just days after a fire killed 14 newborns at a hospital in the capital.
Health Minister Mustafa Kamal laid out the proposal in a Sunday night interview with a local television channel, arguing that permanent employees at state-run hospitals have accumulated outsized power and routinely tie up their institutions in litigation when they are dismissed.
“There should be no permanent government-scale employees in hospitals — they should all be employed on a contract basis, and a CEO should be brought in from the private sector to run things effectively,” Kamal said.
Under his proposal, a privately recruited chief executive would answer to the ministry only for an annual budget, then operate with broad independence over staffing and accountability.
“Whoever performs and works should remain; everyone else should be let go,” Kamal said. “A CEO should be brought in who should have full hiring-and-firing authority. They should get their annual budget approved from us and then be responsible for managing their affairs and ensuring accountability.”
Kamal described the plan as the only lasting fix for what he called the persistent dysfunction in Pakistan’s public health system.
Fire spread in under two minutes, minister says
The proposal follows a fire last week at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, known as Pims, that killed 14 infants in the Mother and Child Health Centre’s gynecology ward. Kamal said an inquiry into the blaze found that just 120 seconds elapsed between the first spark and the fire engulfing the entire ward.
Asked about a separate, earlier fire at a Pims nursing hostel roughly a month before last week’s tragedy, Kamal said he had not learned of that incident until after the more serious fire occurred. He said the earlier fire began when a short-circuited bulb in the hostel’s waiting room fell onto a sofa and ignited it. He said the incident was never reported to the ministry at any level and was not significant enough to draw media coverage at the time.
Kamal said the hospital’s previous executive director had nonetheless formed an internal committee following that fire to investigate and recommend next steps. According to Kamal, the committee’s findings were not submitted to the executive director until the day before last week’s fatal fire.
Minister addresses resignation reports, political fallout
Kamal, responding to reports that he had already offered his resignation to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif but was asked to remain in office until the investigation concludes, said he was not attached to holding the post.
“When I am offering myself up for accountability, then no one should be spared — even though I am not at fault in any of this, I do take responsibility as the minister,” Kamal said, adding that he had already accepted responsibility for the tragedy in remarks to the National Assembly.
Kamal also pushed back on criticism from opposition figures, including members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, who have called for his resignation. He said he was troubled that the party was using the tragedy to revive a separate political dispute over whether Islamabad should become its own administrative unit with elected leadership.
Kamal argued that the fire, if anything, strengthened his position on that question.
“If Islamabad were a separate administrative unit, with elected officials and a mayor who was directly elected by the people, they should be the ones tasked with running this hospital,” he said, adding that hospital oversight should fall to an elected local official rather than a federal minister who must also manage broader health policy.
“It should not be a minister’s job to run a hospital,” he said. “It should be under an elected mayor.”
New hospital director appointed under relaxed rules
Kamal said the hospital’s new executive director, who previously served as chief executive of the National Institute of Health in Islamabad, was appointed on the recommendation of the inquiry committee. He said the appointment required relaxing standard hiring rules, since such positions are not typically filled from outside the institution, and that the government would now need retroactive Cabinet approval to finalize it.
Kamal said the practice of promoting from within has allowed many senior officials at government institutions to act as though they were untouchable, since they know an outsider is unlikely to be brought in over them.
The hospital’s new executive director, Dr. Muhammad Salman, took charge Sunday and told reporters that patient safety would be his top priority. Following his appointment, Salman toured several hospital departments to review existing procedures and met with department heads to discuss the current situation.
“Although it is a challenging situation, as responsibility has been given to me, I will try to prove myself,” Salman said. “We will implement the recommendations of the inquiry committee, and priority will be to ensure patient safety.”
Salman said his immediate goal was preventing a repeat of last week’s fire, but that other hospital risks would also be reviewed. He said the facility’s heavy patient volume would be addressed and that the hospital’s referral system would be strengthened to improve how patients move through the facility.
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