Daily Times

LAHORE: The administration of teaching hospitals and medical colleges has failed to ensure foolproof security arrangements for providing a safe environment to patients and employees in teaching hospitals across Punjab.

In order to identify the shortcomings, the Punjab government has decided to conduct third party evaluation of security measures in teaching hospitals and medical colleges.

Well-informed sources privy to this development told Daily Times that health department has, from time to time, issued a number of guidelines for implementation of security measures in tertiary care hospitals and medical colleges across Punjab after the Army Public School carnage in December 2014.

According to the guidelines, every hospital was bound to install CCTV cameras on entry and exit points, walkthrough gates with metal detectors and Home Department-trained security guards to cope up with any untoward incident. However, the administration of teaching hospitals and colleges had failed to follow these instructions in letter and spirit.

The implementation of such measures by a number of tertiary care hospitals and medical colleges has not been at par with the objectives of the government and therefore, in order to identify the gap in implementation and eventually fill the same, the health department intends to hire the services of a third party or the evaluation of implementation of the aforementioned security measures in tertiary care hospitals and medical colleges in Punjab in order to calibrate the compliance rate vis-à-vis the aforementioned guidelines issued by the department.

The party would pay special attention to the availability of premises security plan, installation/functioning of close-circuit television cameras, construction of watch-towers, deployment of security personnel at strategic locations, laying of barbered wires on boundary walls, adequacy of gadgetry with which security staff would be equipped, and emergency evacuation plan to identify any lapse in the security measures.