Awaiting resolution: Sacked doctors resume emergency duty

Ministers assure junior physicians their demands will be considered.

QUETTA:

Sacked doctors resumed their duties at emergency units at the Bolan Medical College Hospital and Sandeman Hospital, but they did not resume work in other departments in hospitals in the provincial capital.

The government was unable to make any headway on matters related with the strike. Conversely, the authorities sacked 127 protesting doctors.

All major state-run hospitals wore a deserted look from the first day of the strike as no doctor was available to provide medical help to the ailing patients.

In an attempt to resolve the issue, the Balochistan chief minister appointed two ministers to negotiate with the protesting doctors. However, the doctors continued to boycott other departments in state-run hospitals in Quetta.

The sacked doctors, who resumed work, said they have done so after receiving assurances from the ministers concerned that their demands will be met. Asif Baloch of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) stated that they had only temporarily resumed their duties and would not back down from their demands.

Junior doctors, who are anxiously awaiting the chief minister’s response in this regard, said that if a guarantee is not given, they will stage an indefinite sit-in protest in front of the Chief Minister’s Secretariat.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2011.