Doctors at Children’s Complex go on strike

Members of the Young Doctors Association posted at the Children’s Complex in Multan have gone on strike to register their protest against non-payment of salaries.

They are neither attending the patients at the outpatient department (OPD) nor are they visiting the wards.

The 134 postgraduate doctors who had gone on strike demanded of the authorities to clear their dues for the month of October.

A protest demonstration was also held by the Young Doctors Association in front of the new building.

They said that in the first phase of their strike, they had stopped seeing patients at the OPD and in the wards.

They warned that if they were not paid their salaries immediately, then they would be forced to boycott work in the ICU as well.

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They said that they didn’t even have money to pay their utility bills, and gas connections of many of their colleagues had been severed due to non-payment of bills.

Meanwhile, the Dean of the Children’s Complex, Dr Kashif Chishti, said that salaries of the PGRs for the month of October would be transferred into their bank accounts within a day or two.

A spokesperson for the Children’s Complex said that the Children’s Complex, like other government hospitals in Punjab, got its budget paid in three installments. The first of those installments had been exhausted in October.

The second installment had just been received, said the spokesperson.

The spokesperson hastened to add that new batches of postgraduate doctors got inducted every two to three months, but the Children’s Complex didn’t get additional budget to meet the salary expenses which increase with the induction of new batches of doctors.

The spokesperson, too, reiterated that salaries of the postgraduate doctors for the month of October would be transferred into their bank accounts soon.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2023.