VIJAYAWADA: Senior Resident Doctors (SRDs) and final year PG medicos in the State boycotted duties on Tuesday protesting against the delay in clearing their pending stipend hike from January 2020. The SRD Association said PG first and second year doctors will also join the stir if the government fails to respond to their demand in the next two days.
At present, 300 SRDs and 800 final year PG doctors are working in various government hospitals in the State. They had given prior notice to the managements of hospitals about their boycott. PG first and second year doctors are discharging their duties to avoid any inconvenience to patients.
Speaking to TNIE, Dr N Ram Kishan, general secretary of the AP SRDs Association, said they were left with no option but to boycott duties to bring pressure on the government as there was no response from it despite making several representations to it in the last several months.
SRDs who are in higher position than PG doctors, are drawing just Rs 40,000 as stipend per month after TDS, while their juniors (PGs) are getting Rs 45,000. “As per the agreement in 2013, stipend of SRDs should be increased once in every two years. There has been no stipend hike since January 2020. As a result, we are now getting less than junior PG students,” Dr Ram Kishan said.
He pointed out that SRDs in neighbouring Telangana are being paid Rs 80,500, which is almost double their stipend. In Central institutes like AIIMS, SRDs are drawing a stipend of Rs 1,05,000. “We have three demands -- SRDs’ stipend should be increased to Rs 80,000 and it should be given with retrospective effect from January 2020. TDS on SRDs stipend should be abolished, besides provision of incentives to doctors for Covid work,” he said.
AP Junior Doctors’ Association (APJUDA) president Dr Rahul Roy said they have been demanding incentives for Covid work for the past several months. Even their stipend has not been paid since March.
“Incentives for Covid work were already announced in Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. We too want the State government to give an assurance to us in this regard,” he said. The APJUDA president said their efforts to meet Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy failed.