Telangana Doctors oppose move to geotag phones

Hyderabad: The state government has decided to geotag the doctors by connecting their mobile phones with GPS to monitor their movement. This, the government feels, will help in reducing the violation of duty rules by the government doctors.

There have been several complaints by patients that they have to wait for long hours as the doctors were not present in the hospitals and that they were busy in their private practice.

The state government had issued orders banning private practice by government doctors and also warned them of strict action if they take up private practice. But still the rules were being violated.

The state vigilance wing under the General Administration department had now come up with a proposal to geotag the doctors.

Unhappy over this decision of the government, the doctors are up in arms over the proposal to geotag them. Condemning the proposal, Dr Lalu Prasad Rathod of the Telangana Government Doctors' Association said the doctors are not animals. "The medical profession is a sacred profession and if one or two commit mistakes, it is not proper to punish the entire community," he said.

"There will be such people in every department. But it is not advisable to make all of them responsible," he added. The government should remember that Telangana was third in the country in terms of medical and health facilities and the schemes are attracting people from different states and all this was because of the efforts of people working in the Health department, Rathod said.

The doctors said that because of the new schemes introduced by the government, the burden of work had increased on the doctors and other staff. They also demanded the government to implement the three-shift system to decrease the burden on the existing staff. Working president of the association Dr Kalyan Chakravarthy and state secretary Dr Deen Dayal said all doctors should not be made scapegoats as irregularities were found in some cases.