Doctors wary of superannuation

Vijayawada: Taking a strong exception to the stony silence maintained by the State government regarding their demands, the office-bearers of Andhra Pradesh Government Doctors’ Association Dr N Bharat Rao, president, Dr P Shyam Sundar, general secretary and Dr B Durga Prasad, treasurer said here on Thursday that there should be uniformity in superannuation of all the government doctors.

Talking to newsmen, Dr P Shyam Sundar said that after the State bifurcation, the government doctors did not raise their demands for four years keeping in view the financial condition of the State government. “But remaining silent does not mean that we do not have any problems,” he added.

He recalled that the Central government had set the superannuation age for all the government doctors whether they are MBBS or specialists at 65 years. However, there is no such uniformity for the State government doctors, he pointed out. 

The government had fixed the superannuation for specialists at 63, but the same was not extended to the MBBS doctors who have to retire at 60 which is nothing but discriminatory and unjust, he said.

Dr Shyam Sundar said that there had been no recruitment of doctors for the last several years either to the PHCs or Medical and Health department or Vaidya Vidhana Parishad. Surprisingly, the officials were not aware regarding the number of doctors on contract or on regular appointment, he said.

He lamented that doctors working under Vaidya Vidhana Parishad and PHCs were not allocated to respective States even after four years. He said that in view of the hardship to the poor patients, who visit the government hospitals, they would not trouble them with agitation but they prepared an action plan for the next fortnight.

On March 5, the doctors would conduct special prayers at all the places of worship of all religions appealing to Gods to bring pressure on the government to solve their problems. On March 7, the doctors would burn their own effigies to highlight their plights to the government.

On March 9, the doctors would submit their grievances to the leaders of all political parties appealing to them to bring pressure on the government.
On March 12, the doctors would inform their plight to the patients for one minute each and on March 14, they would submit memorandum to the Chief Justice of the High Court at Hyderabad to take up their case suo motu and also submit petition to the National Human Rights Commission. 
On March 15, the doctors would stop conducting post-mortems. And on March 18, the doctors are planning to organise Chalo Assembly programme to take their woes to the notice of the government once again.