Acting tough on absconding medical officers, who were bonded to serve in the State health services, the medical education directorate has asked them to join their duties before December 31. In a recent report submitted to the State administration, the department had mentioned that 218 doctors who had studied in the medical colleges of the State and have availed the benefit of subsidised fees structure after entering into a bond with State health department to serve in the State health services are untraceable.
On the directive of the state administration, the department has now set up a deadline of December 31 for these doctors to join their place of posting. It must be written here that it was severly affecting medical facilities in the State.
The director Medical Education department, Dr Ashutosh Sayana said that the letters have been dispatched to the all absconding doctors. He said legal action would be initiated against the doctors who fail to comply the order.
It is an open fact that the bonded medical students taking advantage of many loopholes in the provisions of bonds refrain from joining government hospitals after completion of their studies.
This tendency of the students has sabotaged the very purpose of the whole exercise. The Government had thought that by entering into a bond the doctors could be made available in remote and mountainous areas of the state.
The bonded medical students have to a pay an annual fees of only `50000 as compared with ` 4 lakh needed to be paid by a normal student. One of the major problems faced by the medical education department is that the bond is signed by student, his/ her parent and Principal of the respective college but after completion of the studies the appointment is given by the DG health.
The experts are of the view that the state administration should device a fool proof mechanism so that the new doctors are prevented from jumping the bond.
Recently the State Government took a decision to raise the amount of bond to `2 crore from ` 30 lakh for MBBS students and `2.5 crore from ` 15 lakh for the Post Graduate (PG) medical students.
The MBBS students of the Haldwani medical college are entering into a bond from the year 2004 while the students of the first batch of the Government medical college Srinagar signed the bond in the year 2008.
783 medical students have so far entered into a bond with the department to serve at end of their studies and out of them only 244 are working in the State health services as per the provision of the bond while 70 are doing their post graduation while 218 have jumped the bond.