The Medical Health and Family Welfare Department of Uttarakhand, which is reeling under acute shortage of doctors, is having more Joint Directors than sanctioned posts. There are 161 sanctioned posts of Joint Directors but the recent promotion of senior medical officers ensured that there are now 235 Joint Directors in the State health service. In a sharp contrast, there are only 292 doctors posted as Medical Officers (MO) in the department against sanctioned 1,227 posts.
The department data suggests a top heavy and highly lopsided situation of the doctors. There are 235 Joint Directors, 31 Additional Directors, four Directors and one Director-General in the health department of the State. In the basic positions of Medical Officers (MO) and Senior Medical Officers (SMO) about 80 percent posts are lying vacant. Out of a sanctioned 1,227 posts of MOs 935 are vacant while 524 posts of SMO are vacant out the sanctioned 640 posts.
To accommodate 74 more Joint Directors, the State Government temporarily blocked 192 posts of MO and created 77 posts of JD in lieu of them. When contacted on the anomaly, the Officiating Director General (DG) of Medical Health Department Dr l K Gusain told ‘The Pioneer’ that the situation arose due to the merger of the cadres of Specialist and General Doctors. Before the merger of these cadres the General Doctors managed to get more promotions than the specialist ones which created a disparity in the two cadres. Dr Gusain said that this disparity was removed by the recent Departmental Promotional Committee (DPC) after the merger of the cadres. The process to remove the disparity necessitated more promotions to the rank of JD than the sanctioned posts. Dr Gusain accepted that large number of the posts of MOs is lying vacant in the department but added that the process to fill these posts has started.
Taking a dig at the top heavy system of State health services one senior doctor said that Uttarakhand inherited the structure of its health services from Uttar Pradesh, but after the creation of the State many new posts were created at the top of the health services so that more senior doctors could be accommodated in the State Capital and other cities. The old-timers of the health department recall that before the creation of Uttarakhand more doctors were available in the mountainous areas. “At that time Directors were in lucknow and doctors were in the hospitals but now the situation has reversed”, said one of them.