The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Medicos to continue stir

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Thursday, Dec 06, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Medicos to continue stir

Dialogue with YSR fails to resolve the impasse

Medicos for concrete action against MIM MLA
Medicos visibly unhappy with the outcome of meeting

HYDERABAD: The agitating junior doctors have announced their decision to continue their strike as a meeting convened by Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy failed to resolve the impasse.

Emerging out of the meeting, representatives of A.P. Junior Doctors’ Association (APJUDA) expressed displeasure over the Government’s failure to announce concrete action against MIM legislator Afsar Khan and his followers who attacked them physically in Niloufer Hospital on Sunday.

Though the Government had offered to constitute a committee to suggest measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents, there was no clarity on their demand for registering cases under Section 307 against the MLA and his followers, they said.

While the junior doctors were visibly unhappy with the outcome of the meeting, the representatives of Government Doctors Association, Indian Medical Association and Nursing Association. Senior doctors, nurses and IMA representatives, however, expressed satisfaction over the Government’s assurances.

YSR’s assurance

Dr. Rajasekhara Reddy, after hearing the demands of the doctors, assured that a six-member committee comprising representatives from junior doctors, Government doctors and nurses associations as well as officials from Law, Home and Health departments would be constituted. The panel would study acts of violence on Government officials and suggest steps within three months for stringent action against the mischief mongers.

The Government would put in place a round the clock police outpost in the vicinity of the emergency and casualty wards of Niloufer hospital manned by six personnel and the investigation into the attack would be expedited, Dr. Reddy said, appealing to the doctors to call of their ongoing stir.

Briefing reporters later, Medical Education Minister Galla Aruna Kumari said the Chief Minister directed the police officials to lift the cases registered against medicos and engineering students during an incident that occurred at Gandhi Medical College in 2004.

The demand of the junior doctors for registering cases under 307 against Afsar Khan could be considered once the investigation into the incident was complete.

She refuted the charge that the Government was going slow in acting against the MIM MLAs owing to its tie-up with the Congress and said the Government had to work in accordance with the Constitution.

Stating that the representatives responded positively during the discussions, she expressed the hope that they would call of the stir after consulting the other members of their association.

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