PESHAWAR: The health department has failed to implement the ban on strikes and protests by the employees despite issuance of a notification to this effect over three years ago.

Sources said a notification issued in March 2012 was aimed to make essential provision of healthcare services to people and to bar healthcare providers including doctors, nurses, and paramedics from going on strikes.

They quoted the notification as making it clear that the employees won`t be permitted to leave their places of duties and go on strikes and harm the patients by not attending them.

Like police, armed forces and personnel of other relief bodies, the health employees won`t be entitled to go on strikes and hamper patients` treatment, according to the notification issued in line with the Essential Services Act.

The order was issued after the Peshawar High Court issued guidelines for a law to prevent strikes at the hospitals to improve patients` care, sources said.

A former chief minister had approved a summary in that regard prepared by the health department and all the major hospitals had been notified about the government`s directives, they added.

However, the notification remains far from implementation after passage of three years and the administrators at the hospitals are unable to take action against employees, said the sources, adding the hospitals were supposed to deal with staffers in light of the notification but they couldn`t do so in presence of different employees` unions, who support their members whenever administration seeks action against them for ill-performance or staying away from duty.

The essential services notification also enlists punishments, including imprisonment and penalties for causing disruption in a smooth treatment of a critically sick or injured person, a senior administrator of a hospital told Dawn.

Wishing anonymity, he said the government was likely to face series of protests from the employees when it would start implementing the Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015, because they would oppose the move.

Sources said the notincation had been ignored by the health department and administrations of hospitals because they didn`t want to invite wrath of the employees. They said only the poor patients suffered as a result of the strikes.

They lamented that lack of interest by the government to implement the notification the health department would continue to face delays in its programmes.