The State Government has created another 500 posts of Assistant Surgeons to handle vacancies in the Periphery Cadre.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has approved the proposal of the Department of Health & Family Welfare, which wants to maintain the cadre strength in the field level to take care of patients.
As every year a large number of in-service doctors are going to prosecute medical courses like Post Graduation (PG) and Super Specialisation and some of them are engaged as Senior Tutors for post-PG training, vacancies occurring for at least three years in their place of postings.
So, the Government is facing a tough time to handle the Periphery Cadre due to such absence. Keeping this in view, in 2013, 436 posts of leave, Training, Deputation Reserve Medical Officers (lTRMOs) were created.
However, this also falls short to maintain the cadre strength as more numbers of posts in Periphery are going vacant as doctors are going for such higher studies in large numbers. Around 1,230 doctors are going for such higher studies creating vacancies at the periphery level.
So, more numbers of lTRMOs were required to fill up the vacancies caused due to physicians moving ahead to join courses of higher learning at least for three long years.
looking at the requirement of taking care of the patients at the field level, the Apex Committee headed by Chief Secretary AP Padhi favoured creation of more posts.
Accordingly, the Department of Health & Family Welfare proposed to create 860 posts.
However, to begin with, 500 more posts have been created and more posts would be created in future, sources said.
Creation of 500 more posts of Assistant Surgeons would help in maintaining the cadre strength to a great extent, feel senior officials in the department.
So, now 936 posts of lTRMOs have been created and the new lTRMOs would be recruited by the OPSC soon in the Odisha Health and Medical Services after the notification to be brought out by the department.
However, more numbers of lTRMOs would be required to be created in future and officials say that it would be taken care of soon, said sources.