The Ministry of Health is planning to hire a large number of temporary doctors to fill up vacant positions in district hospitals. Because there are not enough doctors in the hill districts, people are forced to carry the sick to hospitals in the plains. Elsewhere, they are forced to rely on the peons at the hospitals for advice. The ministry has already advertised for additional health workers and nurses for this purpose. The plan is to hire more than 125 doctors once the Ministry of Health gets the necessary approval from the Public Service Commission. Generally, doctors assigned to district hospitals need to have worked for at least for a year in a central or regional level hospital, but the government has found a way around the rule. The idea is to hire them as central employees and send them to the districts on deputation. However, because the law says that no doctor can be deputed to any one post for over a month, the government also wants to amend that legislation. The rule, which was made to ensure that fresh, inexperienced doctors were not sent to the districts, is now haunting the government, since it finds it is unable to staff district hospitals otherwise. Biswanath Dhakal, Joint Secretary at the health ministry says the clause in the law has made it impractical to staff the hospitals. In the districts, the hospitals have only administrative level staff and some health workers because most permanent doctors have fled, particularly in districts affected by the Maoist insurgency. Even those doctors posted to the districts have remained in the capital for one reason or another.