Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Students unfazed, won't pull out of protest

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI MAY 19. Despite the Government cracking down on medical and dental college students, who are protesting against new private medical colleges, only 33 students of them today came forward to pull out of the near month-old strike.

The Government slapped suspension orders on 5,000 undergraduates and expected them to cave in by today, especially as 1,200 of them had to take examinations in June.

But medical college hospitals saw only a trickle of students. And even among them, many were housesurgeons and postgraduates, not MBBS students as expected.

The Government decided to mention the strike in the completion certificates of housesurgeons and declared the participation by service postgraduates in the protest break in service, which action would strip them of seniority.

In the Madras Medical College, only six students came forward with their parents to submit a written declaration pulling themselves out of the strike, said the Director of Medical Education, C. Ravindranath. Two students each from the Coimbatore Medical College, the Kilpauk Medical College and the Stanley Medical College here, and five students from the Government Dental College decided to withdraw. The Madurai Medical College Hospital recorded the highest number, with 16 students pulling out of the protest.

Even in this small number, many were forced by their parents to dissociate themselves from the strike. When a housesurgeon in the Government General Hospital here was asked why he withdrew from the protest, he angrily pointed to his mother and said, "She's the reason."

The woman said it was alright for students to protest for a short while, but ``this has gone on for a month and patients should not suffer''. Similar tense moments between parents and their wards were obvious in other medical college hospitals, where they had come to submit written declarations of withdrawal from the strike.

Health department officials and college deans said they were receiving calls from parents and students wanting to pull out of the strike and expected greater numbers tomorrow.

However, students today reaff irmed that the strike would continue until a solution was arrived at. They said they had not received suspension orders, and hoped that the Government would call for talks again.

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