Doctors to cease work from Feb 14
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, February 11 2023: All Manipur Health Services Doctors' Association would be launching indefinite cease work strike and shut down of all hospitals in the state from February 14 onwards.

Announcing this at Manipur Press Club here on Saturday, Association's general secretary Dr Lolee P Mao said that they are not satisfied with the reply given by the health minister to a motion regarding the charter of demands of the association during the state assembly session on February 3.The association is demanding time bound promotion or time bound scale, which is applicable in other services such as IAS, IPS, MCS and MPS.

However, doctors are being denied time bound promotion or scale even after serving for 15 years.

As such, many doctors got retired and some even passed away without ever getting promotion.

Even if there is no room for promotion, the government can always provide time bound scale, he pointed out.

Considering the shortage of doctors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the superannuation age of doctors both under central and state services up to 65 years.

However, in Manipur, doctors in RIMS and JNIMS are enjoying the extension while superannuation age of doctors under the state health services has been reduced to 62 years after a brief extension.

To their surprise, the health minister told the House that the extension was implemented on trial basis for a limited period, he said.

Besides, the CM himself said that the state lacks doctors and specialists.

Likewise, none of the district hospital, community health centre and primary health centre, especially those in the hill districts, have sufficient number of doctors thereby hampering the healthcare services in these facilities.

There was also an instance of the public shutting down Tamenglong district hospital due to shortage of doctors, Dr Lolee recounted.

He further pointed out that many medical colleges are being developed in the state but there is shortage of doctors.

There are only around 1400 doctors in the state.

As per the WHO guidelines, the minimum strength of doctors is one doctor for every 1000 people.

However, in the state, the doctors' strength seems to be calculated based on the rules framed in 1988.With the state having over 30 lakh population, the state requires at least 3000 doctors and as such, it is evident that the state is facing acute shortage of doctors, he said.

The health minister also stated that there are around 1000 unemployed doctors in the state and even if they are recruited, the state will still require over 500 more doctors to fill up the gap, the general secretary said.

While questioning the rationale for fixing the salary of doctors recruited through the MPSC at Rs 27,500, which is similar to what a grade-IV employee gets, he said such meagre salary amount is exploitation of the unemployed doctors.

He further said that the association initially placed eight demands but reduced them to four following request from the state government.

The health ser vices doctors in the state are functioning under Manipur Health Services Rules 1982, which is an outdated one.

It needs to be amended from time to time but the government has been ignoring the matter for four decades even though it amended the service rules for a director three times during the period, he lamented.

Maintaining that extension of superannuation age of doctors does not have any reason for interference in administration, Dr Lolee said that the association is not challenging the government but simply demanding their legitimate rights.

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