Service structure: Doctors’ protest rally today

LAHORE: Young Doctors Association (YDA) will hold a protest demonstration against the government for not implementing the agreed service structure across the province on Tuesday (today). The YDA announced the protest at a general council meeting held on March 1 in Bahawalpur.  “The protest will start at 11:00am. Outpatient Departments and indoor services will be suspended at all public hospitals across the province,” YDA media secretary Dr Khurrum Shehzad told The Express Tribune. Doctors will take out take out rallies and hold sit-ins in front of the hospitals. In Lahore, the sit-in will be held at Services Hospital on Jail Road.  Shahzad said the doctors had three demands; promotion of doctors in grade 17 to grade 18, regularisation of ad hoc doctors and increase in the number of paid post graduate training vacancies.  The call for a protest comes after week-long protests and sit-in by ad hoc nurses, which ended when the government issued a notification to convert ad hoc into contractual employees and promised that they would be regularised as per the law. The YDA had last staged a protest demonstration at the Lahore General Hospital against the Punjab government’s decision of withdrawing 192 house job seats across the province and had appealed to Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif to take a notice of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2014.