Pakistan

Ongoing strike: Islamabad doctors join Punjabi colleagues

Pims OPDs will remain closed for 2 hours daily.

March 20, 2011

ISLAMABAD:

The Young Doctors Association (YDA) Islamabad Chapter on Saturday decided to go on strike in the federal capital from Monday, to press the authorities to accept their demands of increased wages. The association made this decision in an executive committee meeting on Saturday.

YDA Islamabad Chapter President Dr Sajid Abbasi said that the Outpatient Department (OPD) of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) will remain closed from 11am to 1pm on Monday.

He said the government was asked to revise the pay scale and salary structure of doctors to Rs35,000 for house officers, Rs80,000 for postgraduate trainee doctors, Rs120,000 for senior registrars, Rs200,000 for assistant professors and Rs300,000 for professors.

Doctors in all hospitals in Punjab have been on strike over wages for the past 19 days. The call for strike was by Punjab YDA after they got no response from the provincial government on their demands for increased salaries, pay protection and an increase in the health budget.

While the strikes continue, doctors have set up free medical camps outside the hospitals to provide free-of-charge treatment to accommodate poor patients.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2011.

COMMENTS (6)

Haseeb Khan | 13 years ago | Reply Its a country where illiterate people doing nothing important earn better salaries while the ones who have worked hard all their lives and are doing the most important job earn peanuts. The importance of a doctors job is so much that even a single day strike causes people to pressurize them by using speeches about their moral obligations. But no one pays a heed to relieving them of their sufferings as a community who have always helped us in the day or night, restlessly and selflessly. Doctors are the best students, they study hard, work even harder, deal with all kind of people, are at risk of all the deadly diseases transmitted to them, aren't shy of touching and treating patients when the patients' own relatives stand a few feet away with hands on their sensitive noses. Doctors make their lives miserable studying and working to make our lives easier, and what do we pay them back with, a pay even less than a peon in a court? Shame on the government and shame on anyone who thinks doctors should die serving them but not expect anything in return. My heart bleeds to see that despite what the government is doing to them for the last few days, the doctors are still running emergency departments smoothly and tending to all the serious patients. Kudos young doctors, you are the saints of the modern times, and you definitely deserve better than what this country and its ignorant, self-centered politicians are offering you.

talal khan | 13 years ago | Reply The bottomline in this issue is this: the people responsible for taking care of the society's health related problems should be atleast given ample consideration by the government as to their private concerns. That is the least they can do. It's shameful that a medical officer earns less than 50000 in most cases, even in private tertiary set-ups. I think the government would do well to address the concerns of people who're entrusted with the physical well-being of their subjects, even themselves when the need arises. It's not even a threat, just putting it out there so that it could be emphasized to a point where it comes under the attention of the law-makers. And, needless to say, it's a point which cannot be emphasized enough.