Drug Regulatory Authority: Punjab govt baulks at issuing consent

ISLAMABAD: The federal government is waiting for a no-objection certificate (NOC) from Punjab to establish a drug regulatory authority (DRA) which, the province says, it will only issue once Lahore’s Sheikh Zayed Hospital is handed under its control.

Senator Pervaiz Rashid, the special assistant to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, said that the federal government was bound to follow all the clauses falling under the 18th amendment. Therefore, as stated in the amendment, the hospitals falling under federal control were to be handed over to the provinces. Similarly, Sheikh Zayed Hospital should also come under the Punjab government.

Senator Abdul Haseeb Khan, who is heading a special committee for the establishment of a DRA, said that its establishment has been on hold since 2002.

“The committee had proposed to the prime minister an ordinance for the establishment of a DRA on February 1, 2012. The premier has convened a meeting of the Council of Common Interests on February 9, in which the final decision will be taken,” Khan said.

Under article 154 of the Constitution, majority is authority. Therefore, even if Punjab does not give an NOC, the ordinance can still be promulgated as Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have already issued certificates, he said.

Khan added that he was in favour of handing over the Sheikh Zayed Hospital to Punjab, but the issue has been politicised now.

Talking to FTNews, Professor Ajmal Hassan Naqvi, a senior cardiologist at Sheikh Zahid Hospital, said that since its establishment, the hospital has worked as an autonomous body under the cabinet division. “It’s like a trust and has never come under the health ministry,” Naqvi said.

Another reason for the federal government’s reluctance to hand over the hospital to the province is that about 25,000 families of federal employees are treated here, as families of many MNA’s and bureaucrats are based in Lahore.

“The hospital has five wings with around 3,000 employees. It has recently adopted a new service structure, called health personnel scale (HPS). Therefore, it will become very difficult to alter everything again if handed over to Punjab,” said Naqvi.

An official working with the Drug Regulatory Board, told FTNews that the federal government cannot hand over the hospital as it was constructed from donations sent in by the United Arab Emirates government. Furthermore, a treaty was also signed between the governments of UAE and Pakistan, according to which the federal government will look after the hospital.

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Benazir Income Support Programme: Does the cash flow to blue-eyed voters?

ISLAMABAD/KARACHI: The numbers don’t make sense at first glance.

Punjab, with more than twice the population of Sindh, has two-thirds of the number of families considered eligible for income support in the latter.

Multan, the prime minister’s hometown, has almost half the population of Lahore, stronghold of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), yet has twice as many families receiving Rs1,000 monthly stipend from the government.

The apparent anomalies have led to resentment, and accusations of nepotism, not just from the opposition, but government’s allies too.

Lawmakers say that districts and constituencies considered strong-hold of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party have a disproportionately high number of people considered eligible for cash handouts.

The opposition openly accuses the government of using the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) as a political tool since its inception in 2008.

Many lawmakers are also questioning the authenticity of a Rs5 billion poverty survey conducted by the BISP last year. The results of the country’s ‘first ever’ poverty survey have yet to be made public.

Provincial data

When the BISP official data, available with FTNews, is plotted on a provincial map, the findings lend credence to opposition’s claims at first glance.

Punjab, the most populous province but ruled by the opposition PML-N, has the lowest ratio of beneficiary families – 1,974 families per 100,000 people – of the four federating units. Sindh, the stronghold of PPP, has three-and-a-half times that ratio – 6,829 families per 100,000 people.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where PPP is part of coalition governments with its allies – the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) – trail Sindh with 5,155 and 4,858 beneficiary families per 100,000 people respectively.

Both Gilgit-Baltistan, an autonomous territory, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, a self-governing state, have governments aligned with the ruling PPP and have 2,400 and 1,518 beneficiary families per 100,000 people receiving income support respectively.

Constituency-level data

A closer inspection at some of the districts further corroborates the opposition’s suspicions. Districts where the ruling party or its allies have majority of the constituencies (coloured blue in the corresponding map), fare better than where the opposition holds sway (coloured red).

District-wise ratios of beneficiary families to per 100,000 people are also given.

Counter-evidence

When asked about apparent disparity in the data, a BISP spokesperson said that given the socio-economic variance across the country, the number of BISP beneficiaries is not proportionate to the population of any district.

“Poverty scorecard is a scientific instrument and it identifies eligible families based on their poverty score, rather than any other consideration” said the spokesperson in a written reply.

The programme declares those eligible for Rs1,000 monthly income support who score less than 17, out of a total 100 points, in the Poverty Targeting Survey Programme (PTSP).

Poverty varies in different cities according to distribution of resources – hence the poverty level in Thar cannot be compared with that of Lahore, Rajanpur cannot be compared with Rawalpindi and Benazirabad cannot be compared with Karachi, he added.

A cross-check with district-wise Human Development Index (HDI) scores, a standard means of measuring well-being globally, lends at least some credence to the spokesperson’s claim. Punjab has a higher HDI compared to other provinces while Karachi and Lahore, which has a low ratio of beneficiary families compared to Multan, have the highest HDIs amongst the districts compared. There are anomalies, though, like Khairpur and Larkana.

Contracts to survey firms

The BISP spent Rs5 billion on the poverty survey, the PTSP. Of this, Rs2.5 billion have been given to organisations conducting the survey and Rs1.75 billion to post offices. The programme owes Rs733 million to these organizations in lieu of the exercise.

The survey was largely conducted by the Rural Support Programme Network – in Upper Punjab, AJK, Sindh, K-P and G-B. Other independent firms were contracted for surveys in southern Punjab and Fata while the Population Census Organisation was awarded the contract for Balochistan survey. The government’s allies are raising questions over the survey.

“I questioned the procedure adopted by the BISP for awarding contracts for PTSP and details of amount paid to each organisation for survey but they never replied, which is a breach of lawmakers’ rights,” said ANP Senator Zahid Khan.

Terming the survey “as controversial as the BISP,” Khan said that several senators will move against the BISP in the courts [for] rampant corruption and nepotism.

The programme awards all contracts using the World bank’s guidelines for ‘quality and cost based selection’ of these firms, said the BISP spokesperson.

It is a very rigorous process and the BISP secured World Bank’s approvals at every stage of the award of process, he added.

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Three abducted Sindh Governor House employees recovered

KARACHI: Karachi police recovered three kidnapped employees of the Sindh Governor House, FTNews reported on Saturday.

The three employees had been abducted from the city’s New Karachi area three months ago.

Police sources said Afzal Baig, Mohammad Naeem and Mohammad Waseem had been kidnapped when they were on their way to the Sindh Governor House on Nov 12, 2011.

An amount of 15000000 was demanded as ransom money by the kidnappers.

The location of the kidnappers’ mobile phones was traced with the assistance of the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). Police then carried out raids in parts of Balochistan.

After receiving a tip, the police finally recovered the abducted individuals from the Hub chowki area late on Friday.

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