JKJAAC questions Health Minister’s 18-member personal staff amid health facility shortages in PoJK

Muzaffarabad [PoJK] September 12 (ANI): The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC) has questioned the allocation of government resources toward the personal staff and protocol of Health Minister Dr Mustafa Bashir Abbasi, while highlighting the reported lack of basic healthcare facilities in PoJK.
In a post on X, JKJAAC said that an 18-member government staff has been assigned to serve the Health Minister. According to the list cited by the committee, the minister’s personal staff includes three drivers, four deputy peons, one media advisor, four focal persons, two Public Relations Officers (PROs), one private secretary, one personal assistant, one stenographer and one gunman.
JKJAAC said that the salaries, perks and other expenses associated with these government officials are ultimately paid from public funds.
The committee contrasted the reported size of the minister’s personal staff with the condition of healthcare facilities across PoJK. According to JKJAAC, the condition of primary health centres, tehsil hospitals, and district hospitals is already evident to the public, with some facilities reportedly facing medicine shortages and others lacking essential facilities.
The committee further alleged that patients are referred to Rawalpindi and Islamabad even for minor treatments because of the lack of adequate healthcare facilities locally.
Raising questions over the government's spending priorities, JKJAAC asked whether the state's limited resources should be directed toward providing healthcare to the public or toward ministers' protocol and personal staff.
The committee also stressed that the issue should not be viewed as being limited to one minister. It said that if other ministers also have similarly large personal staffs and receive comparable perks, the matter raises questions about how the wider governance system functions.
“Whether the public gets medicine in the hospital or not, there are certainly 18 people around the minister,” JKJAAC said in its X post, questioning the contrast between the resources available to government officials and the facilities available to ordinary patients.
JKJAAC said that the issue reflects the style of governance against which the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee has been protesting for the past three years. (ANI)