Young doctors at the Centre-run All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health have gone on a strike in the time of a pandemic, saying they have run out of patience after not being paid for four months now.
These doctors — 19 in all — belong to the first-year batch of post-graduate trainees (junior residents) at the institute and they have not been paid from the time they joined in July this year. The strike began on Monday and is expected to be joined by even senior students, whose salaries are said to be irregular as well.
Young male and female doctors gathered outside the 1932-founded institution in central Kolkata to shout slogans. They held multilingual placards that reflected their anger: “Called a hero, but paid zero”; “Salary in quarantine”; “Forced to hold a placard instead of stethoscope”.
“We joined the post-graduate course (MD) for the session 2020-2023 after qualifying through NEET. We attended all the academic sessions as scheduled and also visited the urban and rural health centres of our institute to provide patient care services. We never denied any service during the pandemic, although we were never provided with personal protective equipment from the institution. But the matter of grievance that needs to be highlighted is the non-payment of our salaries till date, right from the day of our joining,” Dr. Sandipta Chakraborty, a first-year MD student, told The Hindu.
“And it is not as if our seniors are better off. Even they are never sure when they are going to get paid. Sometimes they don’t get paid for three months at a stretch, sometimes they get paid for two months together. From Monday we have not been attending classes or seeing patients. We were forced to go on a strike after repeated pleas failed to produce any result. We spoke to a senior official in Delhi, who said someone from the institute should go there and sort out the matter, but no one has gone so far,” Dr. Chakraborty said.
The dean of the institute, Dr. Debashis Dutta, said there seemed to be a problem with “financial approval” for the disbursement of the salaries and “we are working to sort it out.”
Dr. Koushik Chaki of the West Bengal Doctors’ Forum, who visited the striking trainees on Wednesday to express solidarity, said: “This is highly condemnable and a matter of grave concern and speaks of the apathy of the Government towards the medical fraternity. A prestigious institute which trains doctors to keep the society in good health is itself in distress and has been forced into ill-health.”
