Punjab Civil Medical Services (PCMS) Association, a body representing a large number of Government doctors in the State, have decided to proceed on a two-day strike across the State from Monday to protest the recent transfers
of doctors. The decision taken at a State body meeting of the Association held at ludhiana is likely to hit the health services, mainly at the primary health centres and the civil hospitals, which are run by the health department. The PCMS Association is protesting against the recent decision of transferring 523 specialist doctors across the State. The health department had transferred the doctors on Tuesday to facilitate upgrade of 100 hospitals in the State. According to the Association’s patron Dr RS Buttar and president Hardeep Singh, the doctors would not provide outdoor patient care services or do any postmortem examination but will provide emergency services and delivery services to pregnant women.
Meanwhile, Punjab Health Services director Dr Ashok Nayyar on Sunday made an appeal to the doctors that instead of going on strike, they must come forward and bring to the notice of the Health Minister, Principal Secretary or the Director Health any genuine cases where they feel the transfers have been unjustified.
Nayyar urged the doctors not to adopt the path of agitation, especially when the Health Minister Madan Mohan Mittal himself has assured the doctors that the department was open to reconsider the genuine cases brought to its notice. The sole reason for these transfers is to strengthen the health services in selected 100 health institutions in the State and provide adequate specialists services, he added.
Notably, Health Minister, Madan Mohan Mittal has learnt to have cancelled around 62 transfers as “genuine” cases maintaining that there was a valid ground such as couple cases or the doctor concerned ailing from serious health problems.
Mittal, in a recent press conference, had already made it clear that the Government was open to considering such cases.