VISAKHAPATNAM: The junior doctors have decided to intensify their agitation after the three-and-a-half-hour talks between the Director of Medical Education (DME) and the Andhra Pradesh Junior Doctors’ Association (APJUDA) failed on Monday night, with both the sides sticking to their guns. A state-level APJUDA presidential bench and the convenors’ bench comprising 10 leaders met DME N Subba Rao and AP Government Doctors’ Association leader Jayadheer at the DME’s office in Vijayawada on Monday evening. The parley which continued from 5.30 pm to 9 pm ended in a stalemate. The junior doctors upped the ante demanding fulfilment of all previous promises made by the government on degree registrations in APMC and payment of pending stipend amounts and 15 per cent hike in stipend.
After the meeting failed on Monday, the APJUDA leaders had a meeting at Siddhartha Medical College in Vijayawada to chalk out their future course of action.“The DME asked us to call off the strike unconditionally. If you want the government’s help, immediately withdraw the strike, he told us. But we refused,” said the APJUDA leader J Kodanda Ram from Visakhapatnam.The APJUDA wants a written assurance from the government that all the demands will be conceded on the demands, but the DME was not convinced and the talks ended sans results, said a representative of the APJUDA.
Now, all the government medical colleges will participate in the strike. “The junior doctors of Siddhartha Medical College in Vijayawada, Medical College in Guntur and SV Medical College in Tirupati will join the strike within two days. We have conveyed to the government that the junior doctors will boycott the elective duties till our demands are conceded,” said Kodanda Ram, Patients sufferOn Monday, around 350 junior doctors took out a bike rally from the Saraswathi Park Junction to GVMC Gandhi statue in Vizag. Later, they staged a dharna at the KGH. Due to the strike, patients who came from distant places to the KGH had a hard time. Only four doctors instead of 15 tried to manage the OP wing, leading to abnormal delay. The surgeries at KGH dropped by 30 per cent.