The two-hour work boycott call given by the association of Government doctors, the Provincial Medical Health Services (PMHS), is continuing to take its toll on the already tottering health services of the State.
The doctors of the State health services are on a two-hour work boycott call from February 1 due to which the patients are suffering. long queues could be seen outside the OPD cells of the doctors where patients jostle each other for hours. The doctors arrive after 11 am in the OPDs and work till 2 pm only and in many cases they ask the staff not to take slips from the patients after 1 pm. Interestingly the PMHS has employed the tactics of work boycott to escape wrath of court and hammer home their point by causing problems to the patients. It is worth mentioning here that the Uttarakhand High Court took a serious note of the strike of nurses recently and ordered them to join their duties on third day of their strike. “The doctors are very clever to declare that they are only undertaking a work boycott of two hours and are marking their attendance. Since the government is not taking cognizance of inconvenience of people the court should step in and ask doctors to discharge their duties properly,’’ said one of a patient visiting Doon hospital here.
The President of PMHS, Dr S K Goswami told The Pioneer that the work boycott would continue till February 11 and if the government fails to accept the demand of doctors then there is no option but to go on a complete OPD boycott. He however said that on the initiative of Health minister, a delegation of doctors would meet the state Chief Minister Harish Rawat on late Tuesday night.
The doctors of the state health services are demanding that the state government should implement the Dynamic Assured Career Progression (DACP) across the board and should not discriminate between new and old doctors. The state government had implemented the DACP last year but restricted it those joining the state health services in and after the year 2015. The DACP entails benefit of assured increase in the grade pays of the doctors after 4, 9, 13 and 20 years of the service irrespective of whether they get promotions or not.