Say talk ‘should be open to media coverage’
The ongoing junior doctors’ strike across West Bengal entered its seventh day on Sunday with the agitating medicos responding to Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s talks offer with a tactical move saying they were ready for talks but not inside closed doors but at a public platform.
Mamata had on Saturday asked the doctors to send in their representatives to Nabanna to thrash out a solution to the ongoing imbroglio. “I have already met the doctors’ demands and am ready to talk to them. I have forgiven them for their misdemeanor towards me and have not invoked the stringent Essential Services Maintenance Act considering their career. But they should accept the talks offer and send their representatives to Nabanna from where the Government of the State is run,” Mamata had said.
However the doctors, “having considered carefully the Chief Minister’s statements” decided to respond to her offer for talks, with a mild adjustment saying, “We too want to talk to her but not inside the closed doors but in a public place and in front of the camera so that people can see it for themselves.”
In a statement given after a general body meeting, the doctors said, “We are keen to end this impasse. We are ready to hold talks with the Chief Minister at a venue of her choice, provided it is held in the open, in the presence of mediapersons, and not behind closed doors,” adding “the venue for the talks should be spacious enough to accommodate representatives of all the medical colleges.”
They said, “Where so many thousands of doctors are involved in the agitation how a group of few can end it through a closed-door talks. Let the talk take place in a public venue. Let the Chief Minister choose the venue.”
The doctors also said the victim of the Sunday’s attack who was hit with a brick on his forehead was suffering from intermittent memory loss and epileptic attack. “A bright student as he was his dreams of becoming a surgeon will end now,” they said adding two other doctors from other colleges had lost their eye sights in similar attacks during the strike period.
“Though the Chief Minister claimed that she had taken action and arranged for police, attacks in the past one week have been as many as 230 on on-duty junior doctors across the State,” they said.
The doctors’ statement on Sunday came in the wake of an appeal from the president of Indian Medical Association Dr Shantanu Sen who said, “If the strike continues then the doctors would lose public sympathy,” adding it was in the interest of both the patients and the doctors that they returned to work as soon as possible.
The junior doctors of Kolkata’s NRS Medical College struck work from Monday after a large number of hooligans raided the premises and attacked some of them injuring two of them grievously. They ceased work in demand of a better security system for the doctors apart from a better infrastructure. They also wanted all the culprits to be arrested while the police arrested only five of them.
Even as the Chief Minister in a subsequent statement threatened to use coercive laws like ESMA, the striking doctors hardened their stance making an appeal to her to visit the NRSMH personally.
Amid ongoing war of words from both the sides and some politicians and the members of the civil society making occasional statements in favour of the striking doctors their colleagues from other Government institutions struck too.
At least 15 people have died for lack of treatment in the past seven days, Government sources said hoping the strike would end soon.