In the next few days, the Telangana Government Doctors’ Association (TGDA) has threatened to go on strike. Their demand for implementation of University Grants Commission (UGC) revised pay scales of 2016 has been pending for 4 years and should be considered immediately.

TGDA state president, Dr. Pallam Praveen supposed that the file about the implementation of the revised pay scale is held in bureaucracy only and around 6,000 doctors are ready to boycott the services to bring their complaint in front of CM K Chandrasekhar Rao. They want the implementation of revised pay with debts from January 2016 to be added to GPF as a one-time settlement or in installments.

From Wednesday, Gandhi hospital’s senior doctors will wear black badges for a week to mark their objection. A general body meeting related to this matter will be held on Tuesday. Dr. Praveen told indianexpress.com that if the government refuses to resolve their issues, then they will go for a complete boycott of services. As responsible doctors, they are fighting the COVID pandemic and don’t want to go on the roads to protest. They get paid very less than the state government staff and the salary they draw today was decided 14 years ago. He further said that it is not a financial burden for the state if the CM decides.

The 2006 pay revision was implemented in 2009 after doctors had staged a 47-day protest after which the then CM late Dr. YS Rajashekhara Reddy had adopted the UGC scales for doctors’ salaries. The PRC of 2016 is implemented for central government employees in 2018 and for teachers in 2019. But they are still waiting for the state government to act on it. He said that it is a legitimate plea and wanted to bring this issue to the notice of CM K Chandrasekhar Rao. Dr. Praveen said that the implementation of revised salaries would benefit around 6000 senior doctors in the State.

In the meantime, the numbers of the outsourced nurses who are protesting at Hyderabad’s Gandhi General Hospital, which is the nodal center for COVID-19 treatment in Telangana, might possibly increase if more nurses join them from other state-run hospitals such as Niloufer hospital and Government ENT hospital.

President of outsourced nurses at Gandhi hospital, Megha Bellapurla, said that the health minister has rejected to take any positive decision on regularization of their contractual jobs and reimburse them as per the wage board recommendations. She said that they have been working continuously for the past 13 years. It should be fair to pay them on par with new staff who are getting paid Rs 25000-Rs 28,000. Their demand is to regularize their jobs and pay Rs 34,000 per month. The outsourced nurses said that talks with the government would progress if they are called for further talks, and till then the regular services would be boycotted.

A month ago, the junior doctors at the Gandhi hospital had squatted on the main road demanding decentralization of COVID-19 treatment, immediate enrolment of extra staff, and improved security for all frontline workers.

Source: The Indian Express