PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to send the employees of the four teaching hospitals in the province to surplus pool in case they don`t opt to become institutional staffers instead of civil servants.

The government has started implementation of the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 and asked the employees of Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex in Peshawar and Ayub Medical Complex in Abbottabad to become employees of their respective institutions.

There are two types of employees at the teaching hospitals.

Those employees, who have been hired through public service commission or director of health and sent to these hospitals by trans-fers, are called civil servants while those recruited by these hospitals are called institutional employees.

Currently half of the employees of these hospitals are civil servants and half of them are institutional employees.

Under the new law, the government wants all the employees to become institutional employees and give up their status of civil servants. About 4,000 employees, including 3,000 paramedics and nurses, who are civil servants, aren`t ready to become institutional employees because they don`t want to lose their status as civil servants and opt for new conditions about which they are yet to be informed, according to sources.

Currently, they are employees of the provincial government. The law states that the employees should furnish options within 90 days regarding their decision.

`The new decision is quite opposite to the law,` sources said. All these employees are required to give option to the government by second week of July.

Indications are that the government`s move would trigger series of strikes and litigations as the employees aren`t ready to dissociate themselves from the provincial government and opt to becomeinstitution employees.

The government has claimed that it would improve working conditions of the employees by increasing their salaries once they are merged into the institutions.

Sources said that the government should share the benefits the employees would get under the new system before asking them for an option. In the prevailing circumstance, they couldn`t be expected to give up their present status and opt to work under conditions about which they didn`t know, sources said.

They said that those hospitals were mixtures of employees because there were direct appointments made by those institutions when they got financial and administrative autonomy in 2002 and others, who were sent to those hospitals by directorate or appointed through public service commission.

Bulk of the civil servants is in KTH, LRH and HMC, Peshawar while AMC Abbottabad has about 40 civil servants.

Sources said that a decision taken at a high level meeting a fortnight ago would affect the employees from basic pay scale 1 to 21. They would be transferred to the hospitals throughout the prov-inces after placing them in surplus pool.

Once they opt to become institutional employees, they would work only in the respective hospitals and would have nothing with the government.

The government`s move to bring about drastic changes to improve patients` care is likely to face stiff resistance as it is not easy for the employees to dissociate themselves from the government.

Most employees fear that placement in surplus pool will deprive them of senior positions which exist only in teaching hospitals.

The employees say that the move is aimed at harming their interests.

Once the institution gets control and authority over them, it could introduce harsh measures than the government.

The government is yet to take into confidence the employees and discuss with them the pros and cons of the new system. The move could also lead to serious issues, such as de-recognition of the medical colleges.

The government has appointed teachers through public service commission and if they are sent to surplus pool, the colleges would face the issue of re-recognition.