The Resident Doctors’ Association of the Kasturba Hospital, run by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, threatened to resign en masse on Wednesday as they have not received salaries for the last three months.
“We are not being paid salaries, making us unable to pay our house rent, huge travelling expenses and to buy essential commodities,” the RDA wrote in a letter to the hospital’s Additional Medical Superintendent. “We cannot work without money. Being the front-line workers, we should be paid the pending salary as soon as possible and should be ensured a regular salary payout,” it added.
Abhiman Chauhan said that he was facing issues with payment of loans and that he had to borrow money from his parents to look after his family. Others such as Varun Kumar, a pathologist, have familiarised with such delays in payment having earlier experienced it at Hindu Rao Hospital. In the current situation, he said, with all his expenses, his savings are running out.
“We are afraid that if we won’t get paid by June 16, we will have to opt for mass resignation,” the letter read and urged the authorities to take immediate action.
Chairperson of the standing committee of the North DMC, Jai Prakash, said that talks were on with doctors to dissuade them. He asserted that in the current situation, it would not be right and efforts are constantly being made to arrange for salaries. However, the municipal corporation was unable to generate its own revenue, because various activities such as property tax collection and parking charges had been hit. Apart from this, he said that the civic body’s share of funds from the Delhi government had also been reduced.
Last month, doctors at the Hindu Rao Hospital, also run by the NDMC, had similarly complained about not having received salaries for three months. They had written multiple letters and even gone on strike.