The Hindu : New Delhi News : Fate of contract doctors uncertain

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 20, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Fate of contract doctors uncertain

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 19. Even as they continue to serve the people in government hospitals across the Capital, hundreds of doctors employed on contract by the State Government continue to face an uncertain future in view of the reluctance of the authorities to regularise their services and put them on permanent rolls. This despite the fact that a large number of these doctors have been serving in the government for the past decade without being regularised.

This group of nearly 500 doctors belong to different batches and were recruited by the Delhi Government between 1996 and 2004. These doctors have been knocking at the doors of the competent authority for the past few years to regularise their services but without any success. The Nationalist Congress Party MLA, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, who highlighted the plight of these doctors and urged the Government to intervene, raised the matter in the Delhi Assembly on Friday. Elaborating on the issue, Mr. Bidhuri recalled that such recruitments have been made in the past also and doctors in this category were made permanent later. Citing various examples, he said that such recruitments were made from 1968 to 1977 and these doctors were made permanent by the government in 1984 and 1987. Past precedents should make the work of the Government easy and there should not be any further delay in regularisation of these doctors.

As these doctors were involved in health care and treatment of patients across the government hospitals, Mr. Bidhuri said it was important that they should not suffer mental tension, pulls and pressures from their families. This kind of uncertainty would only lead to fall in their professional output and therefore the authorities should not delay the matter further and take immediate steps to regularise all these doctors.

On the other hand, the Health Minister, Yoganand Shastri, expressing sympathy with the plight of the doctors, said Delhi not being a full fledged State did not have any power to recruit doctors directly and all recruitments had to come through the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC). However, during the past few years, the UPSC did not give permission to recruit doctors and therefore the Delhi Government came out with an advertisement in the newspapers seeking recruitment of doctors on contract basis. Dr. Shastri said the problems being faced by doctors were genuine and he was actively studying their cases and hoped to bring before the Cabinet the issue of their regularisation very soon.

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