New Delhi: Cracking the whip, the Delhi government has imposed the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) against nearly 15,000 resident doctors who are on strike in the national capital. The action was taken after the doctors refused to end their strike and report to work despite the Delhi government accepting all demands that they had. The government had warned that if the doctors do not return to work, strict action will be taken against them.
Meanwhile, refusing to call off strike, doctors have been claiming that the final decision will be made only after Delhi government makes minutes of the meeting public. "We are yet to receive minutes of the meeting and only after reviewing it, a final decision will be made," said a doctor on strike, who also attended the meeting.
Resident doctors have been on an indefinite strike demanding adequate life-saving drugs, security at workplace, fixed duty hours and timely payment of their salaries. The doctors on strike are from 20 hospitals run by the central and Delhi governments and municipal corporations, including Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, Maulana Azad Medical College affected services at the facilities.
According to the doctors, the government has failed to fulfil their demands regarding which they earlier had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Health Minister.
The Delhi government had on Monday accepted all the demands of the striking doctors in a two-hour-long meeting held at the Delhi Secretariat, which was attended by around 25 resident doctors.
On February 27, resident doctors had gone on a day-long strike over similar issues but it was called off after both the Centre and the state government held a meeting and discussed their issues.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also tweeted on the issue, "Most demands of striking doctors genuine. I have directed Health Department to implement them. Health Department should have resolved it earlier (sic)."
Here is the list of demands by the doctors:
"SAVE DOCTORS, HELP HUMANITY"
FORDA Delhi had brought into notice of government lot of deficiencies in meetings held in Feb/March 2015. But still many demands are not fulfilled despite many promises even after passage of 3 months. Here are our demands/issues;
I. ENHANCED SECURITY for doctors on duty and paramedic staff.
2. Resident doctors working more than 48 hours a week should be PAID EXTRA. Directives should be given to all HOD's for ensuring that residents are given POST DUTY OFFS to doctors after performing night duties.
3. Provision for safe drinking water for patients and doctors.
4. Implementation of optimum patient to bed ratio. One Patient one attendant policy to be followed.
5. Provision for generic drugs in hospitals. List of essential life saving drugs and surgical consumables to be made open to all doctors. OTs number to be increased
6. All vacant posts of teaching stafffspecialists must be filled at the earliest on regular basis.
7. All group D staff / OT technicians vacant posts in all hospitals should be filled.
8. Doctors duty room (DDR) must be renovated. All OPDs should be installed with A/Cs.
9. INADEQUATE HOSTEL ROOMS for reside. Equip available hostels with basic minimum hostel facilities (to be decided by FORDA).
10. END to ad-hocism in SENIOR RESIDENCY and ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSTS.
11. Implementation of NEW REVISED RESIDENCY SCHEME decided in LHMC IN MARCH 2015 (like academic leaves for 10 days, two conference fees payment and TA/DA payment per year by govt., residents under CGHS, double book and thesis allowances., amendment in residency age and extension criteria).
If the issues are not addressed properly soon then all the RESIDENT DOCTORS OF GOVT HOSPITALS OF DELHI WILL be compelled to go on MASS LEAVE STARTING FROM 22"o JUNE 2015.
Comments
0 comment