Daily Times

LAHORE: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government in Punjab has categorically refused to put a cap on consultation fee being charged by private medical practitioners.

The opposition benches in the Punjab Assembly, while strongly criticising exorbitant fee being charged by specialist doctors, Friday asked the government whether it could ask specialist doctors to slash their consultation fee or not.

In his response, Parliamentary Secretary for Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Hassan Riaz told the House that there was no restriction on private practice of doctors serving in public hospitals as they had been formally allowed to run their private clinics after their job hours.

The parliamentary secretary took the stance that specialist doctors were highly skilled people and they could charge high consultation fee as per their experience and qualification.

He said that all specialist doctors were performing their duties at the outdoor patient departments of all government hospitals diligently, and added that action could be taken against them according to PEDA Act if found negligent.

He said that a meeting could be arranged with senior doctors to press them to decrease consultation fee. He said that it was the right of doctors to do private practice after their job hours.

The issue was raised by opposition member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), including Dr Noshin Hamid, Asif Mehmood, Arif Abbasi, Mian Aslam Iqbal and Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed during the Question Hour wherein the parliamentary secretary tried to make the issue political on which opposition staged a walk-out in protest.

Speaker Rana Iqbal intervened into the matter and expunged the “undemocratic and non-parliamentary statement of the government representative”. The opposition members then returned to the House.

Later, the speaker in a hurry prorogued the session for an indefinite period without completing the agenda of the day as there were two amendment bills regarding the Explosive Substances and Punjab Government Servants Housing Foundation.

Published in Daily Times, March 17^th 2018.