GMCH MARD residents to protest delayed stipend

Nagpur: Even after several attempts by resident doctors of GMCH to seek regularity in payment of monthly stipend, their woes are far from ending. A letter issued by DMER to Dr Niswade on October 16 stated that the stipend must be paid to all resident doctors by 10th of every month.
However, the November stipend also seems delayed as the resident doctors had not been paid stipend until Sunday. “According to sources in the office, the payment is unlikely to be made on Monday too,” said GMCH MARD President Dr Ashutosh Jadhao.

An intimation letter issued to dean Dr Abhimanyu Niswade by Dr Jadhao on behalf of GMCH MARD states that if the stipend is not issued before December 10, resident doctors will cease to work, except for emergencies and casualties.

On Tuesday, all the residents will be conducting a march from MARD hostel to the dean office in view of failure of pass system, insufficient security, unavailability of important and life-saving drugs in the hospital and irregularities in payment of monthly stipend, he said. According to the protocol, only one or two relatives are allowed to stay with the patient, but since the pass system is not enforced properly, resident doctors become soft targets of the relatives’ ire.

In all, only 68 security guards have been appointed to work in three shifts. At a time, only about 20 are present in the campus that spans 197 acres. Dr Jadhao also pointed out that basic materials such as gloves, sutures, and gowns remain unavailable at the hospital. “There are no antibiotics, sometimes there are no stretchers in the casualty. For a caesarean delivery, we are forced to give a prescription amounting to Rs2500, without which the operation is not possible,” he added.