The Young Doctors’ Association Punjab has decided to hold off talk of going back on strike, for now, as the committee set up to consider their pay demands meets today after several delays.
“We are showing restraint. There was a lot of scepticism at the meeting regarding the government’s urgency to settle the matter,” YDA Punjab spokesman Nasir Bukhari said after a three-hour meeting of their general council.
“I got a call from Chief Minister’s House regarding a committee meeting tomorrow (Tuesday). If things don’t fall in place we still have the right to protest,” he said.
YDA Punjab official Dr Aftab Ashraf said that the group’s leadership was under pressure from doctors to take some action over the delay in the committee’s deliberations, which were meant to be completed several days ago.
He said the executive council of the association would meet again on Thursday, after the talks with the government at the forum of the committee, to discuss the doctors’ next steps.
Punjab government spokesman Senator Parvez Rasheed, who is also on the committee, said that meetings had been delayed because the government representatives on the committee had been out of the country on business.
The government also just appointed a new health secretary, replacing an official who was unpopular with the doctors.
Rasheed said they were working on the demands that the YDA Punjab had presented. “What we agreed to, we will do,” he said.
Earlier, new Health Secretary Muhammad Jehanzeb Khan met for some three hours with a 30-member YDA Punjab delegation.
Khan told the delegates that he would send his recommendations to the government regarding their pay raises. YDA officials said that they discussed all issues in detail.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 26th, 2011.
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