Agencies, Kolkata
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday wrote a letter to senior doctors and professors of Medical Colleges and Hospitals across the state, urging them to take care of all patients in the state.
In her letter, Ms Banerjee, who earlier today visited state-run SSKM Hospital and gave a four-hour ultimatum to the striking junior doctors to get to work or face punitive action, said poor people coming from all districts to hospitals for treatment must be treated properly.
“Please take care of all patients, poor people are coming from all districts. I’ll be obliged & honored if you all please take full care of hospitals. they must run smoothly & peacefully,” Ms Banerjee wrote in her letter.
Earlier, defying Ms Banerjee’s four-hour ultimatum either to join work or face punitive action, if necessary invocation of ESMA, junior doctors at the state-run NRS Medical College and Hospital
today remained firm to continue with their agitation, while several senior doctors decided to
resign en masse.
A six-member delegation of junior doctors this afternoon also called on Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi and sought his intervention after they received ultimatum from the Chief minister.
” We wanted to have armed policemen on duty in the government hospitals and action against those who assault doctors under proper Section, including non-bailable warrant of arrest, ” said a member of the delegation.
A spokesman of the delegation alleged that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a visit to the SSKM Hospital instead of taking the matter sympathetically called the striking doctors “outsiders” and threatened to invoke ESMA on the health sector.
Eds: Pls pick up suitably from earlier series.