The health services of the State continued to get disrupted by the two-hour work boycott call given by the doctors of State health services on Tuesday. The patients in the Government hospitals, CHCs and PHCs faced problems as the agitated doctors kept away from their work in the morning.
The association of Government doctors, the Provincial Medical Health Service (PMHS) has given the work boycott call from 9 am to 11 am. The PMHS is up in arms against the Government for being selective in implementation of the Departmental Assured Career Progression (DACP) scheme.
On Tuesday, breaking the ice, a delegation of PMHS was invited for talks by the state health minister Surendra Singh Negi. The minister asked the association of to call off its stir and assured them to look sympathetically on the demand. However the association stood its ground on the agitation.
The general secretary of PMHS, Dr Naresh Napalchiyal said that the Health minister accepted that the demand of the doctors is genuine and promised that a meeting of doctors with the state chief Minister would be soon convened. He said that demand of doctors for compete implementation of DACP is totality justified and the agitation would continue till this demand is accepted.
The DACP means the 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. Interestingly state government decided to implement the scheme for the doctors who joined the service in the year 2015 leaving the serving doctors of the State health services both high and dry and fuming in anger. These old doctors are now demanding that the benefit of DACP should be extended to them also and are on path of agitation for it.