The agitating Junior Doctors affiliated to Andhra Pradesh Junior Doctors' Association in another novel protest sent flowers to Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on Monday.
The agitating junior doctors went in a procession from the Government General Hospital (GGH) to the post office in front of Ramesh Cardiac Hospital here and posted letters to the Chief Minister with the demands for which they have been agitating. The junior doctors also handed over in the post office flowers, in the form of bouquets and otherwise, to be delivered to the Chief Ministers.
The letters they wrote to the Chief Minister were get-well-soon letters. The junior doctors said they felt the need to write such letters to the Chief Minister because he was not responding to their pleas. “We feel he is indisposed because he is not responding to our plight. He must be suffering from some sort of dementia or memory loss,” a junior doctor said.
The doctors did not rest on the festival day. They flew kites in the spirit of the festival, but the kites had their demands written on them. A few junior doctors scaled an old banyan tree in the old Government Hospital in Hanumanpet and raised slogans holding their association banner a couple of days ago.
The junior doctors are thinking of creative ways to sending the message across to the State government. Their demands include regular payment of stipend, a 15 per cent hike in it once in two years, dropping the proposal to make one year's rural service compulsory, protection during the discharge of their duties, and improving facilities in teaching hospitals.
The APJUDA) said that the government's claim to have released stipend arrears till December 2011 was not enough to give up their agitation. There were several instances earlier when the government made promises that stipend would be paid by the first of every month but could not stand by its word, they said.
