Protest against power off: OPDs in hospital closed

Ahmad Nabi

LANDI KOTAL: Health officials locked down Outdoor Patients Departments (OPDs) of agency headquarter hospital, Landi Kotal for treatment purposes as protest against power off on Tuesday. According to the hospital source emergency and labor room was exempted of the strike and it was left functional to deal emergency case.

Doctors and paramedical staff of the hospital were on the view that due to unscheduled and prolonged power off all machines of the health center including x-rays machines and equipment s in laborarty remained non-function. They added that because of lack of electricity a single case had not been treated in Operation Theater for the last one month.

Medical Superintendent Landi Kotal hospital Dr. Khalid Javed said that the issue had been tackled on highup level of both the departments last year but regretfully the WAPDA officials restarted suspending of power supply to it. “Constant power off suffer our OPDs performance that will effect provision of fund from department to the hospital which is granted on good presentation”, he lamented.

The health officials threatened that their strike would continue till resumption of electricity supply to the hospital. When the WAPDA superintendent for Landi Kotal Shahid Hussain was contacted on the matter he said that the hospital was defaulter and had to pay more than 90 million rupees to WAPDA in terms of consumer bills.

He maintained that on the directions of highup supply of electricity had not been halted but its timing been decrease from 18 hours to 10 hours round the clock. If 50% of the total arrears were collectively paid, electricity would be restarted to the hospital, he added. Strike of the health officials added miseries of the OPDs patients including women and children who arrived from remote areas but returned back without getting treatment of their illness.