The State working committee of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has resolved to take up with the State government and the Medical Council of India (MCI) the poor stipend being paid to house surgeons and the postgraduate students in self-financing institutions.
At a meeting held at Thalassery on Sunday, the IMA decided to take the lead in convening a meeting of the representatives of postgraduate students and house surgeons in all private medical colleges in the State and support their demands.
A.V. Jayakrishnan, State president of the IMA, told The Hindu that house surgeons got an average of Rs. 7,000 as stipend.
There was no regulatory mechanism in the MCI to monitor the implementation of the government directive on payment of stipends.
In the case of PG students, the MCI has a regulatory system which checks the bank details of the stipend payment. This has forced some institutions into complying with the norms. However, many college authorities in the private sector manage to thwart the system by taking the money back from the students after paying them.
