KARACHI: The spokesperson of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) issued a recent statement refuting all allegations of corruption at the facility.
The allegations were made by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assembly, Haleem Adil Sheikh, during a recent press conference.
In the statement, the spokesman said that the allegations were made to serve "political interests."
It further pointed out that Haleem Adil Sheikh, who had cited details from a report of the Auditor General, failed to acknowledge that the report included observations, which will be replied to once the report has been received. The Auditor-General issues such observations to all government departments.
The spokesman of the NICVD further questioned the rationale behind the allegations, stating that how could be corruption rampant in an institution that had provided medical services to over 2.3 million people for free during the past year.
The NICVD did not provide free treatment in the past, but since 2017, the NICVD has been providing free treatment to children and adults who have heart diseases, and the hospital now provides state-of-the-art cardiology facilities 24 hours a day.
Every year millions of patients benefit from this expensive treatment of heart disease, angioplasty, heart bypass, and expensive life-saving devices are also given to the patients absolutely free of cost.
After shifting from the federation to the province, the Sindh government paid close attention to the NICVD, as it is a heart hospital, and it is very important to save human life here.
"All allegations against the NICVD and its director, Prof Nadeem Qamar, are false," the spokesman contended, adding that Prof Qamar had been appointed as the hospital's head after the fulfillment of all legal requirements.
No one's salary in the NICVD is 6 million, there is no truth in such allegations, and the salaries you are talking about are not for one hospital but the salaries of the employees of 28 hospitals of the NICVD, including professors, doctors, nurses, and other staff.
All the staff, including the director, are performing their duties 24 hours a day in this dangerous situation of COVID-19 and providing uninterrupted modern heart treatment services to the people of the country in all 28 centers of the NICVD.
It stated that the opposition in Sindh should stop targeting the NICVD "just to put down the provincial government."