HYDERABAD: Agitating medical students might lose an academic year if they continue to be absent for ten more days and senior resident doctors their present postings in the city hospitals if they continue to be adamnet, Telangana director of medical education Putta Srinivas has warned.
Not fulfilling attendance criteria is being cited as reason for the impending loss. MBBS students require minimum 75 per cent and PG students 80 per cent attendance to be eligible to take university examinations.
Notices to this effect were sent to parents of the students, informing them of the consequences of participating in the protest and not fulfilling the attendance criteria.
Senior resident doctors, who have been allotted temporary one-year service at Gandhi and Osmania Government Hospitals and are not attending duties, are also set to lose their posting at the hospitals. “Their posting will be shifted to districts,” Srinivas told reporters here on Monday.
Undeterred, TJUDA president G Srinivas said the students were ready to sacrifice an academic year.
House surgeons from other states, who are also participating in the strike, will also face the axe. “Action has been initiated in this direction,” confirmed Srinivas. Around 170 students from other states are practising house surgeons.
And, 142 of 272 postgraduates, who were given postings in Gandhi and Osmania Hospitals, joined duties only last week, and 89 of 139 in Osmania and 53 of 133 in Gandhi joined duties on Monday, Srinivas said.
Alternative Force of Docs
With junior doctors and medical students staging protests every year, plans are being charted to create an alternative force of doctors as a contingency. “This plan is in the pipeline. The force will join duties within a day whenever a problem crops up,” Srinivas said.