Hospital shut for non-payment of salaries in Orakzai

HANGU: The doctors and other staff of the District Headquarters Hospital, Orakazai, staged a protest and locked the OPD and laboratories and suspended all services against the non-payment of their salaries for the past five months.

Addressing the protest gathering, Dr Tariq, Dr Amanullah and others also announced that if the hospital did not receive funding, they would shut down the emergency services as well.

They said that the DHQ Hospital managed by the non-governmental organisation Medical Emergency Resilience Foundation (MERF) had not received funds from the provincial government for the past eight months. Despite repeated promises from elected representatives, they said the hospital’s doctors, paramedics, and class-IV employees had not been paid for the last five months. The protesting doctors said that their families were facing starvation and that they had no choice but to lock down all hospital services except for the emergency department.

Due to closure of the hospital, hundreds of thousands of tribal residents in Orakzai kept deprived of healthcare services.

The residents have urged the government to immediately release funds for the hospital.