Doctors' grievances should be resolved
Medical college hospitals in Kerala are the centres where ordinary patients rely on to get the best treatment. These hospitals are already in a state of suffocation due to the large number of patients. The biggest complaint is that there are not enough doctors to examine the patients. If the doctors also go on strike in such a situation, the functioning of the medical college hospitals will be completely disrupted, and the patients will suffer even more. At the same time, if the government is not ready to implement doctors' reasonable demands in a timely manner, they will have no other option but to strike.
The government medical college doctors' association, KGMCTA, has announced an indefinite strike citing lapses, including unfair postponement of the payment of salary revision arrears. The main complaint they are raising is that the government is unfairly postponing the salary revision arrears of medical college doctors, while other state government employees have received their salary revision arrears in full. This is a fair complaint. It is the responsibility of the health department to hold discussions with the organisations in this regard and convince them that the arrears will be paid. The Finance Department should also decide to allocate the required money for this. The Ministers of the Finance Department and the Health Department should take the initiative and resolve the issue through discussion. Since the doctors' strike will cause hardship to the people, the Chief Minister should also intervene in this issue and try to resolve it.
The doctor has also raised demands such as rectifying the irregularities in the salary revision order, revising the unfair pension ceiling to the central rate, avoiding temporary mass transfers, creating sufficient posts to facilitate the functioning of medical colleges, and paying DA arrears. Appointing more doctors in medical colleges is a need of the people as well. There are three times as many patients in the wards with treatment facilities for only eighty people. It is impossible to provide adequate treatment and attention to all patients without increasing the number of doctors.
The annual conference of the Kerala Government Medical Officers Association has also demanded that the government not only construct multi-storey buildings for comprehensive development of the health sector but also appoint sufficient staff, including doctors. They say that there is a delay in ensuring treatment to patients due to the lack of sufficient staff. Along with this, the KGMOA has also demanded that doctors be given due consideration in the 12th salary revision. There should be an approach from the government that considers the complaints and demands of doctors and accepts the important things through discussions.