Doctors threaten mass leave if demands not met in 10 days

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, October 16

The Haryana Civil Medical Services Association (HCMSA) doctors have threatened to go on a mass leave if their demands are not met by October 25.

Giving an ultimatum to the Haryana Government, a state executive meeting of the HCMS resolved to go on a mass casual leave on October 26 and go on indefinite strike from October 27.

“The emergency services, post-mortems and medico-legal services will remain functional on October 26. But if the authorities concerned still fail to take concrete action, the entire health/medical services in the state will be paralysed from October 27 till the demands are met,” said Dr Jasbir Parmar, the president of the HCMS, after the meeting.

The association alleged that the accepted demands were not being implemented due to bureaucratic hurdles and even the Health Minister seemed helpless in getting their concerns addressed.

The meeting also expressed concern over the acute shortage of doctors at the state-run health facilities. It was pointed out that there was not even a single doctor at three Community Health Centres (CHCs) and as many as 72 Primary Health Centres across Haryana.

A meeting of the HCMS was held with the state health authorities on September 16, during which eight demands were accepted and decided to be implemented in a time-bound manner.

Of these, the enhancement of retirement age for HCMS doctors and hike in their post-mortem allowance were agreed to be implemented by September 30.

Besides, the implementation of dynamic ACP structure and change in PG policy were agreed to be implemented by October 15.

The doctors lamented that none of the aforesaid demands had been fulfilled in the time limit fixed by the Health Minister.