Daily Times

CHARSADDA: Frustrated over the lack of health facilities, patients as well as their attendants staged a protest sit-in outside District Headquarters Hospital here on Thursday.

The protesters chanted slogans against the alleged corruption being carried out with the hospital funds meant for providing relief to the poor patients.

They complained that the main generator of the hospital had been out of work for the last 15 days but nobody in the hospital administration ever bothered to fix it. The protesters also blocked the road in front of the DHQ hospital for all kinds of traffic. Addressing the gathering, Jamaat-e-Islami activist Naveed Khan said the government had approved millions of rupees budget for the hospital’s generator to cover up for the hours-long loadshedding, but it had been out of work for over two weeks. He also demanded transfer of the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) executive engineer (XEN) for not being able to control the unannounced and unscheduled power outages.

The protesters also shouted boisterous slogans against the Medical Superintendent (MS) Dr. Muhammad Ali for failing to provide medical care to the patients. Following the protest, the hospital’s generator swiftly became operational. Sources said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Secretary Health was scheduled to visit the DHQ on Friday which led the hospital administration repairing the generator as well as cleaning the premises of the medical facility.