BAHAWALPUR: The Bahawal Victoria Hospital (BVH) is facing a shortage of over 300 paramedical staff members, including 165 charge nurses.

Dawn has learnt that the BVH, a major health facility of south Punjab with a total bed strength of 1,799, has a shortage of 165 charge nurses. Of them, 18 sought admission to postgraduation while another seven managed their transfer to Jinnah postgraduate medical institute, Karachi, raising the number of vacant posts to 165 nurses. In the same way, the health facility is presently facing shortage of 145 paramedical staff members.

When contacted, BVH MedicalSuperintendent (MS) Dr Aamir Bokhari saysthereis an urgentneed toincrease the human resources in such a big hospital of the province.

He says the Punjab government had allowed the new recruitment of nurses and paramedical staff but the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had imposed a ban on fresh appointments.

He says before the ban was imposed the nurses recruitment process was in progress and about 77 nurses had been selected. The process for the recruitment of paramedical staff is yet to be initiated.

He says as the health department and its employees are considered among the essential services, the recruitment of nurses and paramedical staff members may be exempted from ban.He says in the absence of the shortage of nurses and other staff the health delivery system has been adversely affected and the proper treatment and look-after of the indoor patients round the clock has become a tedious task.

He has appealed to the Punjab caretaker government and ECP to lift ban on the recruitment of the employees of health department especially BVH to regulate the standardised treatment of patients here.

MODEL STREETS: The department of local government and community development (LG&CD) will launch a campaign to convert the city streets into `model streets` with the coordination of Bahawalpur Waste Management Company (BWMC).

This was stated by Director LG& CDMuhammad Zaman Wattoo here on Thursday.

According to the director, after the selection of a particular street in a locality, the residents would be provided door-to-door facility for the collection of waste and garbage and an employee of the BWMC would be deployed permanently in the streets to maintain cleanliness.

He added that flower pots and plants would also be placed in the model street.

He added that the objective of the conversion of model street in a locality was to provide atmosphere free of pollution to the residents.

He asked the residents to cooperate with the sanitation staff to make this drive a complete success.