APJUDA wants immediate implementation of demands

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, OCT. 31. The A. P. Junior Doctors Association (APJUDA) has announced its decision to launch an indefinite strike in nine Government medical and two dental colleges besides 34 teaching hospitals in the State from November 1 for achieving its demands.

Representing about 9,800 medical and dental undergraduates, house surgeons and post-graduates, the APJUDA is mainly seeking implementation of the demands which the Government had accepted after its 22-day-old strike in January 2000.

Their only new demands are cancellation of a recent Government Order making one year rural service compulsory for all post- graduates thereby extending the duration of the PG course to four years and scrapping collection of development fund from newly- admitted students.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Dr. M. Hari Krishna, Hon. President, APJUDA, Dr. K. Hari Prasad, President, Dr. J. Srinivas, general secretary, and Dr. B. Srinivasan, JAC Convenor, said they would boycott out-patient and ward duties from November 1 and emergency work from November 5.

They were bitter that the Government had failed to act on the settled demands even 18 months after the earlier strike. Moreover, it was almost two months since the APJUDA had served its latest strike notice but the Government was unmoved. The only demand that had been implemented so far was the hike in stipends.

Circulating copies of the Government Order issued in March 2000 agreeing to the APJUDA's demand for increasing PG seats, they said the number of seats had not been raised even as two academic years had gone by. AP had only 696 PG seats against 1800 in Karnataka, 1500 in Tamil Nadu and 2200 in Maharashtra.

The APJUDA had persuaded medical college principals to send proposals to the Director of Medical Education for adding 333 PG seats based on the norms of the Medical Council of India (MCI). However, the Government had neither notified these seats nor allocated the required sum of money in the budget.

Further, only 35 out of 116 PG courses in the State were recognised by the MCI as the Government was unwilling to part with a sum of Rs. 4 crores towards application fee. Of the remaining courses, the Government had paid the amount of Rs. 2 lakhs each for 25 courses to the MCI but had not invited its team for inspection. As a result, all the PG courses in Rangaraya and SV Medical Colleges remained unrecognised.

The junior doctors also resented the Government's refusal to allocate the promised sum of Rs. 15 lakhs for upgrading the library of each college or to constitute a task force to study the feasibility of implementing the residency system.

Meanwhile, Dr. C. L. Venkata Rao, Member of the MCI, expressed his solidarity with the junior doctors and gave examples of how three doctors, Dr. Seshagiri (Kurnool Medical College), Dr. Srinivas (SV Medical College) and Dr. Rajeev (Gandhi) could not get seats in superspeciality courses in PGI Chandigarh and JIPMER, Pondicherry, because PG courses of their respective colleges were unrecognised by the MCI.

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Section  : Southern States
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