Cash injection: New, higher salaries for doctors on Oct 1

If a doctor is killed while at work, the government will pay his/her family Rs2m.

KARACHI:

After a long wait and fight, doctors working with the Sindh government will receive their salary increases on October 1. They will be paid for the amount that accumulated in the last two months as well.

“We had hoped to see the increase in our salary for the month of August but didn’t,” said Dr Azizullah Diloo, who is the president of the Young Doctors Association at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre. “We hope it will come through in October with arrears now.”

The increase became effective on July 1. Post-graduate stipends were increased to Rs42,500 from Rs22,000. House officers will now be paid Rs24,000 instead of Rs18,000. But these numbers are still lower than what the federal government is paying its doctors. With devolution, doctors in Sindh all come under the provincial government, with some exceptions.

Additional allowances from Rs4,000 to Rs6,000 are being offered to doctors who work in the casualty, with infectious diseases and in rural areas. A non-practising allowance for doctors who do not have a private practice has also been taken into account. The total package is worth Rs2.7 billion.

The package includes a Rs15,000 increment per month for grade 17 doctors while those in grades 18, 19 and 20 will be awarded an increase of Rs10,000. Family members of a doctor who is killed while on duty will be compensated Rs2 million.

The decision to increase their salaries, in response to long-standing demands, came through in the summer. But the doctors did not see a penny. An official, who was on a committee tackling the issue, said that the delay was bureaucratic.

A body that represents doctors across the country, the Pakistan Medical Association, said that while they welcomed the increase, despite the delay, such salaries in Pakistan are still significantly low compared to international standards. According to the PMA’s Dr Samrina Hashmi, the government should also end the difference in pay at the federal and provincial levels. “We need to have a uniform policy across the country,” she said. “Doctors in the provinces do not work any less than doctors under the federal set-up.”

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th,  2011.