The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) Islamabad has constituted a 5-member committee to resolve the issue of protesting employees, Daily Times has learnt. According to a notification, the committee was formed by PMDC President Dr Tariq Bhutta with the mandate to prepare a working paper along with recommendation of justification for payment of health allowance to the PMDC employees. The committee was formed after a daylong strike by the PMDC employees against abolishing of health allowance from the federal government from their salaries. They went on strike and staged a sit-in in front of the PMDC building in protest against the withdrawal of health allowance from their salaries, which was equal to the basic salary of each employee. The PMDC, after a meeting on Wednesday, decided to withdraw the health allowance of employees which they were getting since 2012. Well over 200 employees of the PMDC would be affected by the decision the council had taken without any consultation from the Health Ministry or Law Division, they said. According to the protesting employees, they had been informed that the decision of withdrawal of health allowance was taken due to an audit para. “If this is the case, the PMDC should not withdraw the allowance; instead it should suspend it temporarily,” they claimed. When contacted Dr Bhutta, he said that the council withdrew the health allowance of its employees after an objection from the Accountant General Pakistan Revenues (AGPR). “There is a great unrest among PMDC employees as they have been informed that not only the health allowance is being abolished but also they would have to pay the amount they had taken through the allowance since 2012 as recovery,” said another protesting employee. Dr Bhutta said the AGPR questioned the PMDC that why it had been giving health allowance to its employees and “we had to take care of the AGPR objection and suspend the allowance for the time being”. Terming the cut in salary a real concern for PMDC employees, he said the suspension would cause a reduction of 30 percent in salary of each PMDC employee. “We have decided to get an audit done from an external auditor, and for that matter, we are hiring a leading audit firm that would check legality of the allowance in a week or so,” he said. He said that he had also constituted a committee comprising officers and workers of the PMDC directing it to prepare a working paper along with recommendations and justifications for payment of health allowance to the PMDC employees by July 22. Dr Bhutta said he had asked the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council employees that his office would send the committee’s working paper to the finance, law and health ministries and if they would term the health allowance legal for the employees, the PMDC would continue to provide it to the employees. The employees later called off the strike after negotiations with the PMDC president.