Doctors from govt colleges hold protest demanding stipend hike

Doctors from govt colleges hold protest demanding stipend hike

Ram.Sundaram@timesgroup.com

Chennai:15.06.2021

Around 300 resident doctors from major government medical colleges in Chennai gathered at Stanley Medical College Hospital on Monday and staged a black-badge demonstration as their stipend hike demand goes unanswered.

These postgraduate doctors, who have been treating covid patients since the onset of the pandemic, claimed that their monthly stipend remained unchanged for years now.

A non-service PG in Tamil Nadu receives ₹37,000 to ₹47,000 as monthly stipend from the government. This was the lowest in the country, claim Tamil Nadu Resident Doctors’ Association (TNRDA), which met Chief Minister MK Stalin, Health Minister Ma Subramanian and other health authorities recently to present their demand.

Their counterparts at Gujarat earn double of what they earn now. PGs in other states like Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh resorted to statewide protests boycotting work. Subsequently, these state governments were forced to revise the pay.

R Vignesh from TNRDA said, “We don’t want to disturb services or treatment offered to patients in any way. That is why we organised a demonstration in which only doctors,who were off-duty or in their resting hours, participated”.

Once covid cases started to reduce, there is a huge backlog of non-covid cases and surgeries to be done. So PG doctors and Compulsory Rotatory Residential Interns (CRRIs) will once again start to work 18 hours a day. So the government should soon provide us with a respectable increase in stipend, he added.

TNRDA wanted the state to increase the stipend annually by 10% so that their juniors will not face the same issue a few years down the line. Though TN ministers have not said no to their demand and agreed to make a proposal, there is nothing official yet.

A senior health official in response said that they were provided with a one-time incentive of ₹20,000 to ₹30,000 and their food, quarantine expenses at star hotelsweretaken careof by the government. Their current demand about stipend is also under discussion, he said.

UP IN ARMS: Resident doctors of city government hospitals during a black-badge protest at Stanley Medical College and Hospital on Monday