Condemning the Government Order mandating doctors attached to primary health centres to be in hospital from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. members of Tamil Nadu Government Doctors’ Association (TNGDA) staged a dharna on Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital premises at Palayamkottai on Wednesday.
The protesting doctors said the Director of Public Health, without consulting the doctors working as Medical Officers of Primary Health Centres, had increased the working hours by an hour a day through the Government Order 225 dated July 25, even as the doctors were working from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. now.
while teachers and government employees were working for 37.50 hours a week, the medical officers of the PHCs were working for 42 hours a week and another five hours following emergency calls.
The latest GO had further forced the medical officers of the PHCs to work up to 48 hours a week and also for additional hours during emergency calls. Since the government doctors were working under extreme stressful conditions, late Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi prescribed the working hours of doctors as 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. based on the recommendations of a committee constituted by him.
The Pay Commission had recommended 40 hours work a week for doctors, and the Union Ministry for Health had prescribed similar working hours for nurses. The latest order from the government would seriously affect the health of doctors.
“Reaching the PHCs in rural areas at 8 a.m. after preparing their breakfast and the lunch will be a challenge as the first bus to those remote hamlets would reach there only after 8 a.m. Hence, this Order will only encourage bribing as the higher-ups in the Department of Health Services would blackmail the latecomers. Hence, the controversial order should be withdrawn. Moreover, working hours for the paramedical staff in the PHCs should also be fixed as 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.,” said Mohammed Rafi, Tirunelveli district president of TNGDA.
The TNGDA warned that if the order was not withdrawn, the doctors would never participate in review meetings chaired by Collectors and the Deputy Director of Health Services and would leave the official WhatsApp Groups as a mark of boycott of all official announcements.
Moreover, the government doctors would not send any report to the government and boycott all mega COVID-19 vaccination camps being organized across Tamil Nadu, if the Order was not withdrawn, they said.
