VIJAYAWADA: Medical services in 13 teaching hospitals in the State are likely to be affected from Tuesday with a section of Government Doctors Association JAC announcing strike demanding solutions to their long pending demands, including promotions. They have decided to boycott out-patient services and others, and stage protests at all the teaching hospitals.
However, a section of the GDA deferred their plan and decided to take a decision on joining the agitation at a latter stage.
The doctors at their respective hospitals have formed a JAC with members from each hospital. The JAC argued that the doctors recruited on contract basis for Rajiv Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) were given promotions as per Medical Council of India (MCI) norms within a specific time-frame. This rule paved the way for many RIMS doctors getting promotions from assistant professor to professor with a specific period. However, government doctors in teaching hospitals have been languishing as assistant professor for the past 19 years, the JAC rued.
“The government doctors are supposed to get promotions every five years. If a doctor joins a government hospital as an assistant professor, he should get promoted as associate professor after five years. Then he should get second promotion as a professor after four years as per the MCI norms, but that is not the case.”
The JAC contended that the ‘RIMS doctors, who are junior to them and appointed as assistant professor are now professors.’ “If the government promotes or transfers a RIMS doctor to government hospital, they become our seniors.
This situation is not acceptable. We want the government to rectify the anomaly,’’ Kakinada GDA JAC convenor Dr Prasanna Kumar said. Meanwhile, the Director of Medical Education and Commissioner of Family Welfare held talks with Doctors JAC on Monday morning without success. Meanwhile, another wing within the APGDA did not extend their support to the JAC strike call.
Committee State secretary Dr P Syam Sunder and Central Committee Vice-President Dr PVV Satyanarayana said they will attend duties in all teaching hospitals. But they said they too will go on a strike from September 27, if the government did not accept the demands.