A staggering number of nearly a thousand litigations are pending with the higher courts against the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
These cases 925 to be exact were mostly filed by employees and officials who were aggrieved by various punitive measures taken by the directorate over the years regarding corruption charges, transfers, postings, promotions, tender manipulation, and so on.
Sources said the trend of suing the directorate began in 1989. Till July 2013, only 28 of these cases have been settled.
In most of these lawsuits, either the secretary of the health ministry or the DGHS director general or one or more of the DGHS directors have been made the accused.
Sources have said the operations of the health directorate have often been badly hampered because the director general or the accused directors have to remain busy attending courtroom sessions after having been summoned in these cases.
Often times, they also have to beg pardon before the High Court for failing to appear on or in due time.
Reportedly, there are also cases where a plaintiff, who has been suspended by the directorate due to certain irregularities for example, gets a stay order from the HC and resumes work and irregularities with even greater enthusiasm.
DGHS directors said such practices have seriously jeopardised the chain-of-command of the directorate.
According to official statistics, a total of 51 lawsuits against the DGHS were pending with the High Court in 2009. The number spiked three times in 2010 to stand at 157. Till July 31 this year, a total of 83 cases had been filed against the directorate.
The Dhaka Tribune has learnt that the plaintiffs of these cases are mostly third and fourth grade employees of the directorate. Of the 83 suits filed so far this year, 71 has been filed by third and fourth grade employees. Only the remaining 12 had been filed by the doctors.
Although the directorate has a legal department in place, investigations by this correspondent has revealed that it has always been heavily understaffed.
Sources said the department has a total of seven staff including a legal advisor, an assistant director who is a doctor not a law expert, an assistant, two office assistants, one stenographer and one MLSS.
The post of a legal advisor that is supposed to be the head of the legal department, has remained vacant for the most part of the department’s history.
Particularly, the post has remained vacant since July 15 last year, when a secretary level government official, who was then in-charge of the department, was made officer on special duty.
Although the DGHS has repeatedly written to the ministry for recruiting a permanent legal advisor and two law experts, there has reportedly been no response.
The shortage of manpower in the legal department has meant that officers, who are meant to carry out other tasks, have to take care of the lengthy legal procedures.
As a result, they are committing errors in the complex legal documents, leading to courtroom harassment of the DGHS top brass.
Sources have said since there is no law expert at the legal department, it has become hard for the existing staff to keep track of which case is being heard at which of the 42 existing HC benches.
There are also allegations that the law ministry and the attorney general’s office do not cooperate with the DGHS for conducting these lawsuits.
DGHS Director General Professor Dr Khondaker Md Shefyetullah told the Dhaka Tribune that the decisions or punitive measures that his office takes are all done following proper regulations.
But, the cases filed against the directorate by the aggrieved employees are destroying its chain-of-command, Prof Shefyetullah admitted.
He also added that sometimes they even have to appear before the court for cases filed 15-20 years ago.
