"Doctors will stage protests on Thursday morning if cases are not registered regarding alleged assaults on young doctors in Gujranwala," says YDA Punjab president. PHOTO :FILE
The Young Doctors Association (YDA) Punjab and the provincial government continued to take shots at each other over the Gujranwala incident on Wednesday, though both sides have stepped back from more drastic action.
The YDA Punjab president told reporters that doctors would stage protests on Thursday morning if cases were not registered regarding alleged assaults on young doctors in Gujranwala.
Meanwhile, Khawaja Salman Rafique, the special assistant to the chief minister on health, vowed that the Health Department would take action against doctors who boycotted their jobs.
The YDA Punjab called a strike last Wednesday after around a dozen doctors were arrested for roughing up the medical superintendent of Gujranwala District Headquarters Hospital and vandalising his office. The ugly scenes were caught on camera and brought widespread condemnation for the association. It called off the strike after a day.
The Health Department was reportedly planning to transfer dozens of YDA members out of Lahore to rural areas as punishment for its strike action, though the reports remained unconfirmed.
YDA Punjab President Dr Javaid Aheer said in a press conference at Services Hospital that the doctors would protest at public hospitals at 10am if no cases were registered against “those who tortured doctors” in Gujranwala. He said that false accusations were being made against the arrested doctors. The YDA is continuing negotiations with the government, he said, “but they are trying to push doctors to the wall”.
Dr Aheer said that the YDA would move the courts against the “victimisation and transfers” of doctors. The Lahore High Court later returned a petition moved in this regard as non-maintainable and asked the YDA to file it again with revisions.
Service structure progress
Rafique, in a briefing to the press, said that the Punjab government had implemented close to half the points in the service structure agreement and was working on the rest, “so the repeated protest calls by young doctors in this regard are beyond my understanding”.
A committee set up by the chief minister that included Senator Ishaq Dar and representatives of the YDA and other medical associations had negotiated the service structure agreement last November after several months of discussions amidst doctors’ strikes at government hospitals.
Rafique said that doctors’ groups had agreed as part of the deal never to go on strike again, but months after signing it they had resorted to violence in Gujranwala and withdrawn their services again.
He said that the Health Department had taken action against 17 doctors, including those involved in the Gujranwala violence. “No one will be allowed to create any hurdle in providing medical care to patients and resorting to strikes in hospitals. Strict legal action will be taken against them,” he said.
Regarding the points implemented in the service structure deal, Rafique said that dental surgeons had been included in the specialist cadre and were being given a Rs4,000 special monthly allowance for grades 17 and 18, and Rs6,000 for grade 19. A new induction formula had been put in place and the emoluments of postgraduate trainee doctors increased. Approval had been granted for promoting medical officers to the teaching cadre, while lists of FRCS and FCPS doctors to be promoted to senior registrars had been prepared. Thousands of doctors had been promoted through the creation of new posts, he added.
Special Health Secretary Babar Hayat Tarar said that as part of the service structure deal, six meetings a year would be held for the promotion of doctors. Approval had been granted for paid seats of house officers, he said. A group of senior professors had been set up to resolve the issue of doctors from the private sector without the required work experience being inducted to senior positions in the public sector.
High Court
Also on Wednesday, Justice Ijazul Ahsan of the Lahore High Court upheld the registrar’s office’s objection to a protection from harassment petition filed by the YDA Punjab against the provincial government and suggested the petitioner to file a contempt of court plea instead.
The petition stated that the Punjab government was victimising young doctors by removing and suspending them and transferring them to remote areas. It said that the government, despite clear directions from the LHC, had yet to implement the service structure agreement. It asked the court to stop the government from harassing the young doctors.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 10th, 2013.
COMMENTS (16)
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@Anon: I posted my reply yesterday but so far it has not been posted. May be ET administrator did not like it? I can not do any thing about that.
I know two cases of doctors from Pakistan . One is working as lab technician in th hosp and other one at Red Cross For the last twelve yrs.I am not degrading them .have you seen any doctor in Pakistan in this kind of position. In my state every yr, 20-30 doctors licenses are cancelled permanently on disciplinary ground. It is not unusual here. This is one state only out of fifty. Appna does not represent even 1% of US doctors. They have no political clout unlike the impression you got. As for wages are concerned, you were comparing apples to oranges.The trainee doctor usually get between 35-42 thousand gross amount depending on number of factors like state, university vs community hosp vs county hosp etc. then what were you get 30% goes to taxes. So a person getting getting 40000 will net around 31000.it looks big amount from Pakistani standard but he will be lucky if he could save one thousand out of it .
As far as range of 176-238000is concerned.It all depends on the person and speciality. I know who barely makes 60000and another one who makes half a million. Every body is different. But at the end of the day every body has to pay taxes. On the other hand in Pakistan , lot of doctors in practice are minting money but they do not pay taxes at all. That is the major difference between devolved and devolving world At the end, no violent behavior and strikes are tolerated and then coming on the roads and blocking traffic. That is shameful act. No body became doctor just to work for health dept.Life is bigger than that.Get out of this small world of health dept job. Look for alternative.Twenty to thirty yrs from now you could say I made the wise decision. I did it so I know it first hand.
As for your comment on doctors driving the taxis and doing dishes in US & the rest of the west. Can you quote a reliable source of that information or is that just your biased crooked opinion presented as fact, while being based on some comical TV shows you saw.
Here are some of the facts for you, if you may take time to digest.
1.Pakistan is among the top 4 countries making the US doctors. 2.More than 12,000 Pakistani doctors are serving the US health system(Year 2009). 3.[http://www.valuemd.com/physician-salary-practice.html][1] 4.The Association of Physicians of Pakistani descent of North America (APPNA) has become one of the largest physician communities, reputable and a significant stake holder in US healthcare and political arena.
Here's what the researcher from the above quoted study had to say:
[1]: http://International Medical Graduates In American Medicine-Contemporary challenges and opportunities
[1]: http://Doctors paid $176,000-$238000 per annum. in contast to Pakistani PGs pay of $4800
@HSB
I can not and I am not even trying to.What happened in Gujranwala is being condemned vehemently by our leadership & also being investigated by our 3-member team. All we are asking the educated people like you are to see it in context and hear our side too. Here's one of the account
Why can't we just have a neutral team set by the court investigate the event and book the people who were involved, regardless of the fact that whether they were young or old doctors or ghundas of local PML-N MP.? Now is that too much to ask for?
Thank you all for taking the time to read all that wall of text I previously posted.
@Hafeez: The Mode of YDA's Protest There isn't even a tiny bit of doubt in my mind that doctors should never stop working or turn to violent means of protest and strikes. And that we should adopt the non-violent methods. I whole-heatedly agree and I would therefore request you to go through our timeline of struggle. We started off from sending protest letters to the bureaucracy and gradually stepped it up by wearing black armbands, distributing our demands and health reform brochures, number of meeting with intelligentsia, media and the people in power whose opinion and say matters, in order to inform and involve them in reaching a consensus peacefully and proceeding up to the protest-mode of marches and walks around the hospitals. It wasn't until our health minister( Mr Shehbaz Shareef) out rightly refused to meet with our representatives (and maintains that rigid & self-obsessed attitude to this date) that we threatened to shutdown cold-case outdoors This is when he ordered massive police gardi on doctor community, arresting them from their places of work, from wards, OTs, hostels and Emergency Rooms. This resulted in a palpable fear of working in a hostile environment and doctors went on infamous strike that we all know of. Now I would like to ask that what would you do if you know that you could be arrested, beaten and thrown in jail without any court orders, from the place that you are supposed to work at?
We are the people, we too are components of the same awam, media and civil society that has to this date, refused to offer any moral support to the cause which is equally doctors' and patient's and instead has taken the media's/politicians/Bureaucratic Babu's words to call us callous, cruel and Qatil.
Are we all really that naive to actually believeand take the word of the media where everyone has a price tag, the politicians who don't give a crap about our health system or the patients and all they care about is how to make their boss happy, or the bureaucrats who, despite being less qualified and more celebrated with perks and more, felt their god-ness being challenged.
@Anon: How can you justify the actions in the MS office in gujranwala and beating of MS and DMS. If you will be working in the WEST, you will be terminated right away. Your license will be permanently terminated. You will be put in jail for some number of yrs.a civil law suit will be brought against you for financial compensation for physical damages. In short, you will be financially and professionally destroyed. By the way, have you seen any Pakistani or indian doctor working As lab technician or taxi driver. I have seen that in the west. Because they could not find job in the USA and they had to support themselves or their family. Think about it before you go on strike next time for more amount of money. As far as spending money on the road is concerned, you and me are very small fish, we can criticize but can not reverse. Have you heard about. POWER of the purse. That is the way life is. Thanks for reading my note.
@Anon: Totally agree with your point. Doctors do need to be paid well. No issues on that. The only problem is with how YDA is pursuing this goal. You guys are the cream of this society and you have to set high moral standards. Go for peaceful means, do not stop serving your own nation, do not go for violent protests. What happened in Gujranwala is a sad instance where YDA members are beating up senior doctors and also some of the journalists. Please try to draw a line between civil and non-civil attitude. Peaceful means of protest would take time, but it would certainly earn you the respect and sympathies of nation. Just my two cents!
you are the real heroes yda who challanged bearucrasy and corrupt politicians,but b careful my younger brothers,these politicians are very smart,they are trying to entrap you be careful becareful becareful,gujranwala incident was pre planned to entrap and defame you,such conspiricied may come again becareful,God bless you nanhey massiaah.
yda zinda bad,beaurucrasy and corrupt politicians murdabad
common yda kick asss of these corrupt beaurucrates and politicians holding fake degrees,civil society is with you!
@Jibran: Education in medicine is highly expensive, you can just look at the tuition fees for medical colleges around the world. Besides that, the purpose of this education is to save lives, not to make them suffer. No other field of education emphasizes more on ethics than medical education. No other field of education makes you take oath of serving the public and sticking to ethics. It is the belief in a doctor's skills and ethics that people put their lives in doctors' hands. If doctors feel, and I believe that is right feeling, that they are not being paid well, there are other options to fight the government. Write in the newspapers, go to the courts, go for peaceful demonstrations. These measures may take some time for the doctors to get noticed but at least they will keep the honor of their profession. There is no point in comparing bureaucracy and army's perks with doctors, as two wrongs do not make one right.
This is dangerous. Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering used to attract cream of the youth, due to future job prospects and personal growth. Now people will think twice before sending their kids down those career paths. The next generation of doctors will be useless, and incompetent. Way to go Punjab government for destroying the healthcare and education system of the province.
@Hafeez: Bureaucracy, and military also gets highly subsidized education. Why their perks are so high? Education is the right of every citizen. That's what taxes are paid for. You can't use that as an excuse to enslave entire generations.
@Hafeez: I agree with you.
First get highly subsidized education paid by poor people, and then start kicking a...e of the same poor people. Kudos to the doctors! The nation is already suffering from terrorism by the demagogues, vandalism by the lawyers, mismanagement and corruption by the politicians and the bureaucrats, adventurism of the army, and here we see doctors turn into scoundrels. Young Doctors! please grab at whatever flesh is hanging on this nation's bones.
Let the court decide why these YDA doctors had beaten the MS and DMS . Doctors are totally wrong to go on strike on this issue. Transferring doctors is no response. These doctors must be fired from the service. I have said in the past also, if they do not like service, why they don't resign. Who is forcing them to work for health dept. There are so many other options in life for them. , If they strike on January 10th, they should be terminated from the service or do not pay them for the next three months. Period.
Disclaimer. I am not member of any political party and this comment is written on behalf of poor people of Punjab who come to these hosp for service.