The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Striking medicos get teachers' backing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 24, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Striking medicos get teachers' backing

Staff Reporter

Chief Minister urged to take initiative and resolve the issue

NOVEL PROTEST: Junior doctors drag an effigy of the `dead promises' of the Government in Hyderabad on Thursday. Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

HYDERABAD: The State unit of Democratic Teachers Federation has extended its support to junior doctors who went on strike from Thursday demanding implementation of Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission report.

The DTF president, N. Somasekhara Sharma, and its secretary, K. Narayana, said that it was laudable that the junior doctors were not agitating for their personal benefit but for overall improvement in medical education and health sector.

They appealed to the Chief Minister to take initiative in resolving the strike.

The junior doctors who had waited for a year for the Congress Government to implement its assurances, called for the strike to press their long pending demands. They had been demanding action against private medical colleges that neither had basic infrastructure nor faculty, allotment of management quota seats on the basis of entrance test, sanction of new medical colleges on the basis of population among other things.

Pro-rich attitude

The Government, by not responding to the demands on user charges and seats under management quota, had exposed its pro-rich attitude, the DTF leaders said.

While no Health Minister had been appointed so far, the Principal Secretary, Health, had left on foreign tour unmindful of the fact that lakhs of poor families would not get medical help because of junior doctors' strike.

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