Resident doctors unhappy with pay panel report
An association of resident doctors in
government hospitals today claimed the salary raises proposed by the Seventh
Pay Commission are likely to exacerbate the exodus of doctors from government
to private healthcare institutions.
The Federation of Resident Doctors
Association, a body of junior and senior residents in central government
hospitals, said the commission's pay recommendations had done little to address
the imbalance between the government and the private medical sector.
The commission, which submitted its
report to the Union government last week, has reduced a component of the pay
called the non-practising allowance (NPA) given to government doctors for not
engaging in private consultations, the federation said.
The commission has proposed a reduction
in the allowance to 20 per cent of the basic salary from the current level of
25 per cent, although representatives of doctors had sought a raise to 40 per
cent. It has also proposed a drop in house rent allowance to 24 per cent, 16
per cent, and 8 per cent of basic pay from the earlier 30 per cent, 20 per
cent, and 10 per cent in tier-1, tier-2, and tier-3 cities, the federation said
in a statement today.
The recommendations will raise the
starting salary of senior resident doctors from the current Rs 88,000 per month
to Rs 105,000 per month, federation office-bearers said.
"This is much lower than what we
had expected and much lower than the salaries that doctors with similar level
of qualifications would receive in private hospitals," said Pankaj
Solanki, a senior resident surgeon at Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, Delhi, and
the president of the federation.
The federation has claimed that an
assistant professor in a government medical college would have a starting pay
of about Rs 85,000 per month, while a consultant in some private hospitals with
an equivalent medical qualification would receive Rs 2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh.
India has over 400 medical colleges that produce about 56,000
MBBS-qualified graduate doctors and about 25,000 specialists with postgraduate
MD or MS degrees. But many medical colleges, including government colleges,
have long been dogged by faculty shortages.
The pay commission report has observed
that the number of medical officers, teaching and non-teaching specialists and
public health specialists in the central health services in 2014-15 was 2,942
against the sanctioned strength of 4,006.
But medical faculty in government
healthcare institutions said there are certain advantages in working in such
hospitals that cannot be measured quantitatively. "Yes, we're overloaded
with patients," said a senior cardiologist at the Post-Graduate Institute
of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh.
"But we don't have commercial
pressures, we don't have targets to meet, and we get to train the next
generation of doctors - some of us see these as benefits," the
cardiologist said.
