The journey towards a thriving Center.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institutebeen made fully functional and it is fast scaling up services. Notwithstanding the ruckus over the performance of the institute, it has made great strides forward in surgeries as well as diagnostic and treatment services at the facility. Last week,Alhumdillah, the PKLI performed 73rd Kidney Transplant, 7th of this year.After much deliberations by legal and technical experts, we have rendered the PKLI the much needed transparency. There were sections of 'omission and commission' aplenty in the hastily-prepared Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute Act in 2014. Having fixed those, finally the PKLI is now a thriving institute with the transparency it hitherto lacked.

One moot point here is that for all the hyperbole the last government put into the PKLI media build up, the project turned out to be a damp squibas far as functionality and transparency was concerned. Everything was pulled off in such haste that legal, financial and administrativecomplexities ended up in numerous audit paras. Further, although the hi-tech equipment was procured, yet no mechanism for supplies was developed, resulting into wastage of resources.

By the time we took over, the Institute was already in a legal and administrative chaos necessitating immediate government intervention, ownership and direction. The Supreme Court of Pakistan had intervened and had ordered necessary revisions in the Act. It may be pertinent to mention that the Supreme Court had ordered a Forensic Audit (Digital Forensic Research & Services) that revealed discrepancies in funds allocations and spending. On Court orders, the then Board of Governors was replaced with an ad-hoc Committee on 13th September, 2018.

Put in retrospect, we would have chosen to utilize these resourceson other initiatives, with greater focus on prevention of liver and kidney complications and modernizing the existing facilities. But since a lot of resources had already been put into the project, wisdom was in making it better than originally conceived. Public offices are accountable to people; they are custodians of tax payers' money, there must not be a waste.

Our legal team worked on the draft of the new PKLI Act and it was finally passed on 13th March 2019. The new legal arrangements bring it under Govt control and ensure financial and administrative transparency

The Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute and Research Center Bill 2014 was approved in December 2014. It was a...