A meeting of the Committee on Public Accounts (PAC) of Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly was held here today under the Chairmanship of MLA, Mohammad Akbar Lone to review the functioning of Health and Medical Education Department (H& ME).Legislators, Mushtaq Ahmed Shah, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, Abdul Rashid Dar, Rajeev Jasrotia, Jeevan Lal, Ghulam Nabi Monga and Firdous Ahmed Tak attended the meeting and gave their valuable suggestions to improve the functioning of the department.Threadbare discussions were held on CAG’s Audit Reports pertaining to the Health and Medical Education Department besides overall functioning of the Department.Chairman directed the Commissioner Secretary, Health and Medical Education to expedite the process of convert of sub-district hospitals into district hospitals in newly created districts in the state and asked him to submit a detailed report in this regard to the Assembly Secretariat as early as possible.
The Committee directed the concerned authorities of health department to provide Laparoscopic Surgery Units in every district hospitals of the State and process of recruitment of all vacant posts of specialized doctors and faculty vacancies at Government Medical College Jammu and Srinagar.The Committee also discussed the other related issues of the health department including providing free medicines to all the government health institutions and said that existing machinery and equipments should be made functional so that the poor people of the state get benefit from the facilities.Commissioner Secretary, Health & Medical Education Dr Pawan Kotwal briefed the Committee about the observations made by the CAGs and assured for strict compliance of the directions and said Action Taken Report (ATR) will be submitted before the Committee in its next meeting.
Accountant General, CAG J&K, H Abbas also briefed the Committee about the observation made by the Comptroller and Audit General pertaining to the Health and Medical Education Department.After detailed discussions, the Committee dropped the Audit Paras with the certain directions for compliance and submits the Action Taken Report (ATR) to the Committee to its scrutiny by the Chairman and members of the Committee.Among others, Secretary, Legislative Assembly, Secretary, Information Department, M H Malik, Secretary Technical, DG, (A&T) Finance Department, Director Finance, (H&ME), Director Health Kashmir and Jammu, Managing Director, NHM, Principal GMC, Srinagar and Jammu, Principal, IGGDC, Principle, GDC Srinagar, Project Director, JKSACS, Managing Director, JKMSCL, Director Family Welfare, Additional Secretary, LA besides senior officers of H& ME and Assembly Secretariat were also present in the meeting.