The “weak” legal unit of the health directorate has reportedly been struggling to cope up with the overwhelming number of ongoing legal battles faced by the health ministry and the DGHS, causing setbacks for the health sector.
Currently, the High Court has over 1,000 pending writ petitions against the health ministry and the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), including more than 30 petitions lodged in the first two months of this year.
More than 70% of the writ petitions are reportedly related to transfer and posting issues, while the others include pleas regarding job dismissal, tender, medical admission, illegal establishment at hospital campus, time scale suspension, selection grade, audit objection, residence allotment etc.
The Dhaka Tribune has found that although the number of writs had been continuously increasing over the years, the health ministry and the directorate had not been able to strengthen its legal section for conducting the case proceedings swiftly.
The writ petitions against the health ministry and the DGHS are dealt by a seven-member legal unit at the directorate, led by a legal adviser. However, the adviser post has remained vacant since July 2012, with a DGHS assistant director – who is a doctor by profession – working as acting legal adviser since then.
Asked about the performance of the legal unit, acting legal adviser Dr Zahidur Rahman, told the Dhaka Tribune: “I am a doctor by profession, not a lawyer. Then how can it [the unit] run well?”
Requests to the health ministry regarding the appointment of a legal adviser, as well as a separate proposal for appointing a three-member panel of experienced lawyers, have reportedly gone unheard.
It has been learnt that public prosecutors of the law ministry provide defence for the writ petitions against the health ministry and the DGHS. However, it is difficult for the public prosecutors to provide proper attention to the health sector cases, as they also have to deal with thousands of cases from different ministries.
Sources inside the DGHS legal unit told the Dhaka Tribune that around 1,400 cases had been lodged against the health ministry and the directorate since 1989. Among the total cases, more than 1,000 writ petitions were lodged with the High Court and the rest with the administrative tribunal.
The filing of writ petitions had grown exponentially in recent years, with more than 600 writ litigations lodged during 2010-2013, the sources added.
Several senior DGHS officials said almost everyone who were transferred against their will were taking advantage of the public service rule that allowed an employee to lodge a case with the administrative tribunal if they were “wrongly” or “unjustifiably” transferred or posted.
The absence of a strong legal unit had resulted in only around 70 out of 1,400 writ petitions to reach full judgement, with the ministry and the DGHS losing out in most cases.
Dr Shah Newaz, director (administration) of the DGHS, admitted that the legal unit of the directorate lacked strength and that the legal adviser position also remained vacant.
In a bid to strengthen the legal unit, the DGHS has already sent proposals to the health ministry for filling up the post of legal adviser and to appoint a panel of lawyers, he added.
Meanwhile, around Tk40 lakh out of the Tk50 lakh budget allocated for the unit had reportedly gone unspent last year. Seeking anonymity, an employee who works closely with the legal unit told the Dhaka Tribune that there was no clear directive on how an official would expense the funds for conducting the cases, or for other miscellaneous uses.
A large portion of the budget had to be returned, as the unit was not allowed to appoint any private lawyer or panel of lawyers to run the cases under the budget, the official added.
