Kejriwal interacts with doctors of govt hospitals

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today interacted with around 3,000 doctors of government hospitals through video conference on AAP government's recent decision to waive user charges and make available medicines free of cost from next month.
The Delhi Chief Minister said that medicines and user charges will be made free of cost in government hospitals from February 1.
"Today, I talked to doctors via video conference about implementing the new scheme for our hospitals. I have asked them to prepare a list of medicines to be made available free of cost," Kejriwal told reporters here.
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Panda also held a meeting with FORDA members yesterday.

Sources said that all issues raised by FORDA have already been taken up by the Health Ministry with the high-level committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary which is looking into the various anomalies.

They said that proactive action has already been taken by the Ministry to take up the cause of medical professionals while it has also said that it would help arrange meetings of FORDA officials with nodal officer of the Finance Ministry, if need be.
The Ministry has also provided a copy of the letter written to the Ministry of Finance in connection with the demands of the doctors pertaining to 7th Central Pay Commission to FORDA.

FORDA, which has strongly been opposing the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission since November last year, is demanding an increase in the non-practising allowance to 40 per cent from existent 25 per cent. In the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, it has been reduced to 20 per cent.
"The basic pay and NPA were merged together while calculating House Rent Allowance (HRA) earlier but this has now been ommitted and HRA will be calculated only on basic pay resulting in less than the desired salary."
"Against the desirable density of 85 physicians per lakh of population, the availability is 57 physicians. But the CPC has only observed this scarcity and has done little only to boost the morale of the doctors," said Dr Pankaj Solanki, President of FORDA.

FORDA also demanded uniform pay scales, night shift allowances which currently exists for nursing staff in government hospitals and formulation of a uniform central residency scheme for resident doctors of India.
Solanki said that the recommendations are strongly discriminatory and are against the interests of the medical profession and that retention of doctors in government hospitals will become difficult if they get implemented.