Gian Sagar Medical College and Hospital in soup

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, March 16

The management of Gian Sagar Medical College and Hospital at Banur is in the soup again as its faculty has halted work for the past over 20 days. The faculty has been protesting non-release of their salaries for the past six months. Except emergency services, all OPD services and teaching have been scrapped, which has become a cause of concern for almost 500 MBBS students.

This is not the first time that the authorities have failed to disburse the salaries of their staff for months together. There have been protests in the past also in this regard and the staff have been completely boycotting work, causing inconvenience to patients.

The faculty had submitted a memorandum to the Dean and the management on February 19 about their demands and said if they were not fulfilled by February 25, they would be forced to go on strike. Since the management did not take any concrete action, the medical college and hospital staff went on strike and are sitting on a dharna since February 25.

Repeated meetings between the management and the faculty have yielded no results as the management is not able to fulfil its promises of dispersing salaries of faculty and paramedical staff.

Moreover, several senior doctors have resigned in the past few months due to salary issues and worsening financial status of the institute management.

At present, there is a shortage of faculty in every department of the institute as per the norms of the Medical Council of India. One of the senior doctors on the condition of anonymity said the state government seems to be turning a blind eye to the state of affairs at Gian Sagar.

“The faculty of the institute is on the strike for the past 20 days due to non-payment of their salaries for the past six months. Patients of the region are also suffering because of the ongoing strike as they have to move to Chandigarh, Patiala or Ludhiana for higher medical care. No classes of medical students are being conducted, which certainly is a bad sign as far as the future of students is concerned,” he said.

It is worth mentioning that the authorities of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited had even scrapped the power supply to the institute a few days ago due to the non-payment of power bill of roughly Rs 1 crore. 

Another teacher said it was for the state government and the MCI to look into the shortcomings of the institute and take effective steps to ensure that the faculty and students don’t suffer at the hands of management.

“The current situation has been repeatedly brought to the notice of the Vice-Chancellor of the Baba Farid University of Health Sciences (BFUHS) and Hussan Lal, Secretary of the Medical Education and Research Department, but no solution has been provided till now,” the teacher said.

Meanwhile, Secretary of the Medical Education and Research Department of Punjab Hussan Lal said he had already directed the BFUHS Vice-Chancellor to evaluate the situation and they had already visited their campus on March 14.

“I will soon receive the report and suitable action would be initiated based on the report,” he said.