More than 400 doctors on strike in Himachal Pradesh

More than 400 contractual doctors went on leave for 3 days from today. Demanding there rights of regularization of there job. But none of the Govt. Officer bother to enquire why they want to get regularized. I would like to highlight what are the side effects and the benefits of this.

Benefits :

A doctor when comes out from the medical college his age is around 26 years approximately. But today as everybody wants to get best treatment they prefer specialized persons so to do specialization doctors have to take the examination and again study for next 3 years and if someone thinks to get treated by super specialized doctor then it adds another 3 years. If everything goes right the age of super specialized doctor will be 32 years but out of 10 super specialized doctors only 1 is able to complete this and by this age 70 % of the doctors are not able to do post graduation, so you see how is a doctor struggles. Now another point is that as we know India is divided by cast and religions our post graduation seats are also divided e.g we have 68 post graduation seats in Himachal out of this 34 seats are reserved for all India quota means these 34 students will come those who have passed the all India post graduation exam. Rest 34 seats out of this 21 seats are reserved for those doctors who are regular in hp govt. Health services and these 21 will be further divided on cast etc etc and out of these 21 only 4 seats are reserved for those doctors who are working for state government. They are contractual and out of this 4 only 1 is reserved category. Left 13 seats are for open category. From next year out of 34 some 25 seats will be reserved for regular working doctor and out of this 5 will be for contractual and from 2013 onward 95 % of the total state quota reserved seats means 34 seats if not increased by that year will be reserved for regular doctors, means from 2013 out of 34, 31 seats will be reserved for regular doctors. That’s why all contractual doctors want to get regularized so they can get their post graduation seat.

Another benefit of doing post graduation while you are regular is that your service is counted but for contractual no such policy there services will be terminated means if I get through the PG as a contractual and my friend through regular, my friend will be 3 years more senior to me when I will again join the services.

Another benefit to govt. is that if a regular doctor goes to do post graduation he will return to do his duties because his service is counted but a contractual doctor or a doctor through general quota 99% chances is that he will join the govt. duties only for maximum 3 years to polish his skills and after that he will leave to do private job. Himachal govt. is facing acute shortage of specialized doctors if govt. keep on doing this like in Distt. Hospital Chamba that does not have an ENT specialist form last 5 years, no dermatologist, no gynecologist, no neuro surgeon and so on. So you can imagine this is the situation of disst. Hospital and how many distt. we have ….everyone knows.

What are the drawbacks :

If you check few months back Amar Ujala pages, an interview was published of Mr. Gulam Nabi Azad and a question was asked that why the most prestigious professional peoples are kept on contract?

He replied that when a state govt. hire a doctor as a contractual most of the salary is paid by the central govt. and marginal money is paid by state govt.

So its clear that if Himachal govt. is going to regularize all doctors they have to bear the expenditures by them which they don’t want whether for this they have to make doctors suffer and automatically who will suffer not the netas but the poor who can’t afford the treatment at private hospital.

They can increase there salary to 75000 rs and there allowances, their pension but they can’t pay 30000 rs to some 400 doctors… really a shame.

Our health minister says that they have opened the 150 seats for commission but he cannot think that the guy who joined 5 years back as contractual and the guy who joined 2 months back will be on same platform. And out of this 150 how many will be for MBBS because maximum will be filled by post graduate doctors and few will be left for MBBS doctors and we all know that how many will be for those who are having good connection with govt. and aam doctor will again suffer. It will create professional rivalry among doctors because a regular doctor and contractual posted at same hospital, regular will withdraw more pay, more holidays , more increments etc and contractual will be siting and watching and cursing his fate. Ultimately he will hardly take interest in his profession.

Another point health minister is saying in newspapers is that we have increased the post graduation seats to 68 but fact is that centre govt. has changed its earlier policy 1 professor 1 pg student to 1 professor 2 pg students so it means automatically who are having 20 seats there seats are 40 because centre govt. knows that we are running acute shortage of doctors and providing health we are far behind countries like Bangladesh according to WHO.

So moral of this whole story is that benefits are more important as compare to drawbacks.

Dr. Akshay Minhas