BHUBANESWAR: The All Odisha AYUSH Doctors’ Association (AOADA) has threatened to launch a statewide strike from March 27 to protest the state government’s apathetic attitude towards fulfilling their long-pending demands.
The AYUSH doctors have been demanding permanent employment, pay on par with government ayurveda and homeopathy doctors, access to higher education, regular medicine supply, Rs 20 lakh health insurance scheme for them and their families and a one-time compensation of Rs 40 lakh for the families of doctors who die in service.
AOADA president Dr Prashant Kumar Padhi said AYUSH doctors have been serving under the NHM for last 18 years, playing a crucial role in community health, emergency care, maternal and child healthcare.
“Despite their contributions, 1,485 AYUSH doctors working in CHCs and PHCs continue to be denied regularisation of their jobs. We remain on temporary contract without fair wages or job security. We will stage a peaceful protest at Lower PMG in the city to press for our demands. If our demands are not addressed, we will be forced to intensify our protest,” he said.
General secretary of the association Dr Pravas Chandra Swain said the state government has made multiple promises but no concrete steps have been taken so far. Despite forming committees and receiving recommendations for regularisation, AYUSH doctors have been left in the lurch, he pointed out.
While 8,195 contractual health workers including nurses, pharmacists, and lab technicians, were regularised through a cabinet decision in 2019, AYUSH doctors were excluded, the association members added.