Daily Times

Islamabad: Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif will appear before the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the Lahore registry on Sunday (today) in the hearing of a suo moto notice on lack of clean drinking water in the province.

The summons was issued after the SC bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar remained unsatisfied by a report submitted by the Punjab government.

The report had stated that 540 million gallons of polluted water was being drained into River Ravi.

“If we can summon Sindh’s chief minister over pollution, why should we not summon Punjab’s [chief minister]?” the CJP asked.

Earlier, Justice Nisar emphasised the need to improve the healthcare system in Lahore and ordered officials to ensure that the best facilities were available to patients.

“I want you to work on improving the healthcare system with the same passion with which the SC is looking into this issue,” he told the officials, “This is your responsibility.”

The CJP lamented that newborn children were unable to get proper health facilities, warning officials that he would soon visit the Children’s Hospital to assess conditions on his own.

When he asked if hospitals had taken any measures to improve conditions, an official from the Services Hospital said that the administration had increased the bed capacity from 400 to 614.

The chief justice then ordered that a report on shortcomings being faced by hospitals should be submitted at the next hearing on February 24.

Last month, the CJP had taken a suo motu notice of the worsening conditions of public hospitals in Lahore. He directed medical superintendents of 19 hospitals to appear before the SC’s Lahore registry with reports containing details of emergency equipment, CT Scan, MRI and ambulances.

Published in Daily Times, February 11^th 2018.