Mamata Banerjee urges ‘willing’ doctors to resume work, offers protection

KOLKATA: Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Saturday asked “willing junior doctors” to resume work and promised them “protection” and appealed to others, in the name of “humanity”, to come to the negotiating table at Nabanna, the “highest” government office in the state.

Banerjee ruled out going to the NRS Medical College and Hospital campus as demanded by the striking junior doctors, but told them that the government was against taking any coercive action — like arrests or imposition of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) — to get them to work. The appeal to striking doctors in the name of “humanity” pitted the strike against doctors’ commitment to their patients and reminded the agitators how “thousands of common citizens were suffering” bec-ause of the strike.
Banerjee’s appeal to the striking doctors follows Friday’s unsuccessful attempt by five senior doctors, held in high esteem in the medical fraternity but also “trusted” by the establishment, to get the agitators to Nabanna. Saturday’s appeal by the CM was again rebuffed by junior doctors at NRS, the starting point and the epicentre of the agitation, but it indicated a change in tack in the administration’s efforts to end the strike that continued into the fifth day. Implicit in Banerjee’s press conference on Saturday evening was an attempt to present the administration as reasonable and flexible and willing to negotiate, even with “young students” who might be intransigent and hot-headed at times.
The attempt to portray striking junior doctors as a divided house — between those “willing to resume work” and others — came through in a dramatic interlude in the press conference, which was suspended for a few minutes as the CM went to her cabin to meet “some willing junior doctors from across medical colleges” who had come to assure her that they would “join work”.
“A group of 10 junior doctors came to meet me and said they are willing to join duty. We will support and protect them. Once some junior doctors join work, others will follow and the strike will implode,” the CM said after the dramatic interlude.
One of the doctors whose name was doing the rounds as having met Banerjee at Nabanna posted a denial on social media. “There is a false rumour that I meet with CM want breakup this apolitical movement. It’s completely false allegation (sic),” the Facebook post read.
The striking junior doctors were also quick to refute the CM’s claim that some of them had gone to meet her. “No junior doctor went to meet her. She has not focused on our valid demands. We want her to come to NRS and listen to us to take certain steps. We are eagerly waiting to serve the ailing people,” a junior doctor at NRS read out from a drafted statement soon after the CM’s presser.
In the press meet, Banerjee said all demands of the striking doctors had been accepted and termed the attack on them as unfortunate. “I had sent my ministers, principal secretary to meet the doctors, waited for 5 hours to meet their delegation yesterday and today, but they did not come. You have to give respect to the constitutional body,” she said, reiterating that the junior doctors were still welcome to come to Nabanna and meet her.
She also reminded the striking doctors that despite the existence of ESMA that had been used in nine states — including Gujarat — to crack down on strikes that disrupted essential services, she had desisted from enforcing it.
“We never arrested a single person, we didn’t arrest a single doctor, we didn’t clamp ESMA. This government has a human face. I have seen reports that patients in Midnapore and Murshidabad have died without treatment. I went to SSKM Hospital after I got an SOS from a patient urging me to start the Emergency ward. I was pushed. They abused me. I kept my cool and asked police against taking any action. This government has a human face,” the chief minister said.
The CM also outlined steps that had been taken to enhance the security of doctors. “There will be a security audit of all medical colleges. Each hospital will have an assistant commissioner level officer in charge of security there,” she said, adding that she was ready to accommodate other demands as well and even suggested that the striking doctors could meet with the Governor or chief secretary if they wished to end the impasse.
Brushing aside a question posed to her on mass resignation by doctors at medical colleges and hospitals across the state, she said it (mass resignation) was a tool to register protest in a democracy that didn’t mean anything. Almost 1000 doctors have resigned in the state en mass since Thursday evening.
The CM’s press conference came after a dramatic day that began with hope when senior doctors at RG Kar Medical College made an impassioned appeal to agitating juniors to withdraw the stir that has paralyzed at least 13 big government hospitals across the state. This was further buttressed when word got around that the CM had decided to visit Dr Paribaha Mukhopadhyay, one of the two doctors injured in the NRS attack on Monday night that triggered the strike.
But the opportunity quickly dissipated following a statement by an Indian Medical Association functionary that left junior doctors fuming and led to the cancellation of CM’s hospital visit. IMA all-India president Shantanu Sen, who met administrators, senior doctors and police at NRS to discuss how the stir could be resolved and addressed protesting junior doctors at the general body meeting emerged to comment there were “outsiders” with vested interest who were inciting the junior doctors to keep the crisis alive. “I saw outsiders, doctors who had already passed out, in the GB meeting,” he said.
The comments firmly shut the window to a resolution with junior doctors denouncing the statement and reiterating the decision to not meet the CM at Nabanna on Saturday evening. Later, the junior doctors issued a statement: “Yesterday, the DME had verbally informed us that CM has asked us to meet her in her office. Following the statements made by the CM in the past two days, we are upset and apprehensive regarding our representatives meeting with her behind closed doors. That is why, we are not sending any representatives to her office. Right from the beginning, we have said we are open to a healthy discussion to find a solution to meet our demands. We want to make this very clear that we are deeply concerned about the sufferings of common people. We want an urgent solution to this situation by ensuring proper security and safety at work place as per our demands. We shall resume our duties as soon as our demands are met. We humbly request the CM to meet all of us at NRS and discuss and implement all our demands at the earliest.”
With the deadlock persisting, Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi wrote to Banerjee duriung the day, urging her to meet the doctors and assure them on providing adequate security and to look into their grievances. The Governor had written to the CM on Friday as well outlining the demands and grievances of the doctors and their willingness to resume duty when these were redressed. Banerjee later said she had spoken to the Governor on the issue.
During the day, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued another advisory to the Bengal government on the ongoing strike by doctors and sought a report on the matter urgently. The advisory followed a letter from IMA to Union home minister Amit Shah demanding enactment of a central law to check violence against healthcare workers in hospitals.