LAHORE: Mayo Hospital, among the largest public hospitals in Pakistan, is facing financial and administrative difficulties, with the timely payment of employee salaries subject to continuing delay.
According to sources, delays in salary payment have become routine since the hospital was granted the status of an autonomous institution, leaving employees facing financial difficulty each month.
Employees say they do not know when each month’s salary will be released. The absence of timely payment is affecting household expenses and other financial commitments.
Sources said the hospital’s finance department has been unable to ensure timely salary payment for several months, and that the problem has persisted.
The connection staff draw between autonomous status and payment delays is worth setting out, because it is a structural issue rather than an accusation of individual failure.
A hospital operating as a line department is paid through the provincial treasury on a fixed government payroll cycle. Salaries are disbursed on the same schedule as every other government employee, and the hospital’s own financial position is irrelevant to whether staff are paid.
An autonomous institution manages its own accounts. It receives a grant, generates some revenue of its own, and disburses salaries from those funds through its internal finance wing. The advantage is flexibility in procurement and hiring. The exposure is that payroll now depends on grant releases arriving on time and on the institution’s finance function operating with treasury-grade reliability.
Where either falters, the shortfall lands directly on staff — and unlike a delayed equipment purchase, a delayed salary has no slack in it for a household budget.
Mayo Hospital, attached to King Edward Medical University, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the country and a principal referral centre for patients across central Punjab and beyond. It runs a substantial emergency department and carries a workload that extends well past Lahore’s own population.
An institution of that size employs thousands across medical, nursing, paramedical, administrative and support grades. The lowest-paid categories — sanitary workers, ward attendants, security and support staff — are the least able to absorb a delay of days or weeks, and are typically the last to be paid when a finance wing prioritises disbursement.
Governance reform in Punjab’s tertiary hospitals has been contested for years, with successive iterations of autonomy and institutional management models. The recurring criticism from staff associations has not generally concerned the principle of autonomy but its implementation — specifically, whether institutions are given the financial systems and predictable grant releases that autonomous operation requires.
The account in this report is consistent with that pattern: not a decision to withhold salaries, but a payment mechanism that has not been made to work reliably.
This report is based on sources within the hospital and on accounts from employees. The Lahore Times has approached the Medical Superintendent of Mayo Hospital, the hospital’s finance wing and the Punjab Specialized Healthcare and Medical Education Department for comment on the cause of the delays and on when outstanding salaries will be released.
Any response received will be published.
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