Bathinda medicos on mass leave against transfer order

Tribune News Service
Bathinda, July 2

All government doctors of the district on Friday took mass leave to protest against the reduction of non-practice allowance (NPA) and transfer of Dr Gurmail Singh, district head of the Punjab Civil Medical Services Association (PCMS) to Fazilka.

After protesting on the Civil Hospital premises, slogans were raised against the Punjab Government and Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal on the Bathinda-Mansa national highway. After keeping the road blocked for about half an hour, the doctors again staged a protest at the Civil Hospital.

Apart from the Kisan Union, various organisations of the Health Department also joined the protest in support of doctors. The protesters said by transferring Dr Gurmail Singh, the government had proved that it was anti-people and trying to suppress the struggle of doctors.

At present, medical services are shut in all civil hospitals and health centres of the district. The patients who reached the hospitals for treatment remained at the receiving end.

The doctors announced apart from OPD, other services like OT, postmortem, medico-legal services and emergency would also be closed. After the announcement, the Civil Surgeon relieved Dr Gurmail Singh and put newly recruited doctors on duty to run the emergency, so that patients coming to the hospital did not have to face problems.

Bathinda Civil Surgeon Dr Tejwant Singh Dhillon said, “Doctors went on mass strike today in protest but emergency and postmortem facilities remained operational. Only OPD work remained affected due to the strike.”

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