Fatehgarh Sahib/Bathinda, July 14

For the third consecutive day on Wednesday, doctors in the district abstained from work and held a protest march, affecting the OPD and other medical services. Keeping in mind the problems faced by patients, doctors have decided to starting a parallel OPD from Thursday.

On behalf of PCMS Association, Dr Satnam Banga said doctors fully understood the problems faced by the patients due to the closure of OPD. He said the union has decided that all doctors would not work in the OPD of the hospital, but start their own, so that patients did not suffer due to the strike. He said all doctors would examine the patients in the annex made near the OPD parallel to the government OPD and no fee would be charged from them and medicines would be given to them as required.

He said the parallel OPD would run for the next three days. If the government still did not accept their demands, they would decide on the next course of action. He said they had been forced to go on strike as NPA was their right. Assistant Civil Surgeon Dr Swapandeep Kaur and other prominent doctors were present on the occasion.

At the Civil Hospital, Bathinda, representatives of the Joint Punjab Government Doctors Coordination Committee said the strike would continue till the state government increased the NPA and linked it with the basic pay.

Dr Jagroop Singh, acting president of the PCMSA, said, “We will hold parallel OPDs on Thursday so that patients visiting various government hospitals do not face inconvenience.” — TNS