The Hindu : Doctors ignore ESMA threat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 09, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Doctors ignore ESMA threat

By Feroze Ahmed

CHENNAI May 8. Shrugging off the State's threat of use of the Essential Services Maintenance Act, government doctors today announced that they would launch a series of agitations starting Saturday and an indefinite strike from May 21 if the Government did not revoke its order allowing new private medical colleges.

After an emergency meeting, the Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association president, K. Prakasam, said members Statewide would join medical and dental college students in their fortnight-long struggle.

``We are not frightened by the ESMA,'' he declared. The Health Minister had yesterday warned that the Government would slap the ESMA on doctors if they joined the student protest, and ``put it down with an iron hand''.

Despite the warning, about 10,000 doctors in government hospitals, headquarters, taluk and non-taluk hospitals, public health centres and ESI hospitals were expected to join the struggle, said the TNGDA secretary, N. Muthurajan.

Today was the first day of one-hour protests by the TNGDA in medical colleges and hospital headquarters all over the State.

Association members would stop elective surgeries from May 10 if a solution was not arrived at by then. If the demands were not conceded by May 12, they would stage a one-day token strike on May 14, and from the next day go on a ``needle-and-knife-down' protest, stopping all surgeries, except in emergencies. If the deadlock persisted, the doctors would resort to an indefinite strike from May 21. However, they would treat deserving patients free in private hospitals, said the office-bearers.

If the Government took action against them meanwhile, they would go on an indefinite strike immediately.

The decision would cripple state healthcare centres, visited daily by thousands of patients mostly from the poor and lower middle classes. Doctors in the Government General Hospital here said they already started postponing elective surgeries, after service postgraduates had joined the stir last Monday.

On the Minister's charge that the strike had a political backing and that doctors had ignored a similar government order issued by the DMK regime in 1999, Dr. Prakasam said they were not aware of it and that agitations would have started then itself had they known about it. ``We have no political backing,'' he insisted. He said the then Health Minister, N. Veerasamy, had assured the doctors that new private colleges would not be allowed in the State.

Meanwhile, in a bid to crack down on the students, the Government decided that internal assessment marks and attendance records would not be forwarded to the Tamil Nadu MGR Medical University if they did not return to classes by May 15. ``They will be refused hall tickets,'' said the Director of Medical Education, C. Ravindranath. The university, in a statement, said the MBBS and BDS examinations would be held as per schedule from June 2 and would not be postponed ``under any circumstance''. In another development, the condition of four students deteriorated further on the fourth day of their fasting. Two of them fell unconscious last night due to low sugar, they said. Hospital authorities started administering intravenous fluids today.

Other medicos continued their agitation, staging a demonstration outside the Government Dental College. They were arrested and later released.

Official sources said the Government was working out a strategy to deal with the strike threat posed by the doctors.

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