New Delhi: The resident doctors of the Kasturba Hospital in Delhi are going on strike for seven days starting Wednesday over non-payment of salaries for several months.
Around 40 doctors, including junior and senior residents, will take part in this strike, which will go on till 20 October. The doctors have also threatened mass resignation if their salaries are not paid.
“We like to inform you that we will be on strike for the next 7 days w.e.f 14 October till 20 October or till our salaries are updated. After 20 October, all the resident doctors will give mass resignation”, said the letter dated 13 October.
The emergency services of doctors will stop starting tomorrow, it said.
Dr Sunil Kumar, president of the Resident Doctors’ Association, said the doctors of Kasturba Hospital had been facing the issue of irregular salaries for four or five years, but things have become more difficult during the pandemic.
“The matter has even gone to the high court. The Supreme Court had also said that non-payment of salaries is a criminal offence. But we have still not got our salaries since July,” Kumar told ThePrint. The hospital is run by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation.
Blaming the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Kumar said that doctors are suffering due to politics. “MCD has a budget of Rs 18,000 crore, but they still cannot pay the salaries on time. They will spend crores on showering flower petals on doctors, call them corona warriors, but won’t spend to pay those same frontline workers.”
The association’s vice president, Dr Abhiman, told ThePrint that both the Central and state government are equally responsible for this. “We don’t want to get into the politics of it. We simply demand that our due salary should be paid,”
The medical superintendent of Kasturba Hospital, Dr Amita Saxena, though, clarified that the emergency services would not be suspended. “We will provide services with whatever manpower we have”, she told ThePrint.
On the strike, she said, “They have given us the notice, let us see how this works out.”
ThePrint reached the council’s mayor Jai Prakash via calls and texts, but got no response until the time of publishing this report.
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Not for the first time
The issue of irregular or delayed payment of salaries has been raised by various doctors of different government-run hospitals in Delhi. At present, the resident doctors of Hindu Rao hospital are on a “symbolic indefinite strike” over non-payment of their due salaries for the last three months. The Delhi government had to shift Covid patients from Hindu Rao hospital to other government hospitals in Delhi.
In June, the Delhi High Court had taken suo moto cognisance of the matter and directed the North Delhi Municipal Corporation to pay the resident doctors of Kasturba and Hindu Rao hospitals, which had been pending since March.
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