After min’s nod, resident docs to move finmin with fee-waiver demand

Nagpur: The resident doctors who worked on the front line during both the Covid-19 waves in Maharashtra recently met the medical education minister Amit Deshmukh along with in-charge secretary of Directorate of Medical Education (DMER) Dr Dileep Mhaisekar. The minister has in-principally accepted their main demand for fee waiver, they said.
The final decision will be taken by finance ministry for which the doctors will soon meet state finance minister Ajit Pawar.
Stating that fee waiver is not just a financial demand for resident doctors, Dr Dnyaneshwar Dhobale Patil, president of central committee of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), said that they literally sacrificed their academic years for Covid service. “As government hospitals and medical colleges were full of Covid patients, anyone of us hardly got opportunity to learn the super-specialty for which we had taken admissions,” he said.
As their teachers and heads of departments were also busy in Covid work, these post-graduation students missed their classes, on-job training and practical work experience of their super-specialty. With third wave already projected, the residents are eyeing another year of academic loss.
Dr Dhobale Patil said that resident doctors are ready to work even in the projected third wave and “another year of studies might be washed out due to it”. “We demanded that the state government should waive off fees for the year 2020 and 2021,” he said.
Deshmukh assured them that the government is positive about their demands. “Considering the dedication and hard work of the resident doctors in the first and second wave of pandemic, I have assured them that the government is positive about waiving off their fees as well as sanctioning additional stipend to appreciate their work,” said Deshmukh.
As sanctioning funds for the above demands is the prerogative of the finance ministry, the MARD central committee officials are now seeking appointment of Ajit Pawar. “We will be meeting Pawar soon. We are hopeful that the our effort will get due recognition,” said central MARD vice-president Dr Pranav Jadhav.
Resident doctors are considered as backbone of the government hospitals and medical colleges. During pandemic, the young resident doctors were frontline Covid warriors. They were felicitated and awarded for their service. But, their long-pending demand of stipend revision, incentive for Covid service and fee-waiver are yet to be considered by the state government.
DMER in-charge chairman has been given the responsibility to present the proposals for finance ministry’s approval.