Telangana State tardy in following suit of many States

Hyderabad: While a section of doctors including junior doctors are strongly opposing the proposal to hike the retirement age of the teaching faculty in government medical colleges, the view from the health department was that Telangana has been very late to implement the decision as various other States in the country hiked age during the last three years to overcome staff shortage woes in medical colleges.

Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kerala, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Puducherry, Karnataka, Haryana, Delhi, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh, Bihar, West Bengal etc. are the States that increased the retirement age of faculty in medical colleges. However, the revised superannuation age is different in different States. While most states settled for 62 years as the revised retirement age, some States increased it between 63 years to 70 years.

Director of Medical Education Dr K Ramesh Reddy stated that Telangana opted for age hike last year, but the decision could not be implemented due to the election code. "The Central government gave instructions to States, much earlier, to go for age hike to overcome the acute faculty crunch in medical colleges across the country. Telangana is not the only State to implement age hike decision.

Many other States in the country actually revised the faculty retirement age earlier much earlier," he explained. The view put forward by the health department was that senior teaching faculty's exit after more than three decades of service would not only impact the quality of teaching for medicos, pursuing MBBS and PG Specialisations in State-owned medical colleges but treatment services in hospitals is likely to be hit also.

And there is a possibility of non-approval of recognition for the permitted PG seats apart from problems of legal viability of degrees of medicos pursing studies at present. Doctors working in various teaching hospitals in the State and junior doctors, who are boycotting elective duties from Wednesday onwards are not content with the government's view.

Their arguments are that recruitments would slow down completely and also it would stymie the movement of young and deserving junior doctors up the seniority rung. The opposing doctors wanted to know why the decision is being expedited at this moment after not thinking of it in the last three years when the Centre gave its view.

Only because a person holding a key post in the health department is set to retire at the end of June the age hike issue came to the forefront and is being implemented unilaterally without consulting stakeholders, they fumed.

Dr B Narahari, State secretary general of Telangana Government Doctors Association suggested implementation of CAS (Career Advancement Scheme) would solve the problem of dearth of Professors in various medical colleges as there are many faculty members with over 10 years of experience still working as Assistant Professors and once CAS is implemented they are eligible as designated professors irrespective of availability of vacancies. He further stated that Centre left the age hike to the discretion of various States and it was not made mandatory.