Ahead of complete shutdown of services from Sept 9, PCMSA boycotts meetings
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, September 2
In order to build pressure on the government before complete shutdown of services from September 9, doctors at government hospitals here initiated boycott of official meetings and reporting on targets of various government programmes.
The Punjab Civil Medical Services Association (PSMSA) has also announced to boycott trainings, inquiry assignments and reporting on benchmarks for various categories of patients. Though the scheduled protest from September 9 is expected to hurt patients in a big way as it would make medical treatment unavailable to them, the decision to boycott various duties such as reporting and meetings is expected to paralyse the administrative works of the Health Department.
A delegation of the PCMSA Amritsar led by president Dr Sumitpal Singh and general secretary Madhur Poddar met the Civil Surgeon and district programme officers of various government schemes and apprised them about the decision to boycott various services.
Dr Sumitpal Singh said, “Our purpose of strike is not to make the general public suffer. Decision to boycott medical services is a last resort and before that we have decided to wake up the government by boycotting services directly associated with it.”
He said boycotting meetings and reporting on various schemes did not affects public directly.
Dr Manish Poddar said, “The association is trying to send a message that we are serious regarding our demands. If the government is concerned, it should take a decision now which can save the people from getting affected due to complete shutdown.”
Dr Poddar said their demands regarding assured career progression, payment of arrears, security at workplace and recruitment of doctors were pending for long.
The PCMSA association said despite concerns shown by government representatives on the issue of security at the workplace, the ruling dispensation had failed to deliver. The association said community health centres in the rural areas had no security and it was a matter of concern.