Arrest: Government cure for strike

Ahmedabad: Taking the resident doctors head-on on the fourth day of their strike, the state government on Sunday invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma) against the medicos. The resident doctors who are seeking a hike in their stipend, however, said that they were determined to continue the strike and would run a parallel medical camp at the civil hospital from Monday.

"The medical service is important essential service and this comes under the purview of the Act. The action was taken to maintain the principles of the Act. The Act has provisions for harsh punishment, including imprisonment and fine, for those who are interrupting in this essential service," said an official.

"The resident doctors should come back to the service as the government had earlier hiked their stipend. Action will be taken against those who do not come back to duty on Monday," the official said. "We have invoked Esma against the striking resident doctors.Now that they are under Esma, they can be arrested or detained also," said principal secretary of health, Ravi Saxena. Meanwhile, reports said some doctors had resumed their duty at Civil, VS, and government hospitals in Surat and Vadodara late on Sunday evening, after Esma was invoked.

However, there was no official confirmation to this. Earlier on Sunday, the government had decided to terminate the resident doctors who are on strike."We have decided to start terminating the resident doctors from tomorrow morning," Saxena said.

"We held several rounds of talks with the representatives of resident doctors but they remained adamant so far, forcing us to resort to their termination," Saxena said.

"We have also written to the parents of the doctors, advising them to counsel their children, who have worked hard and reached to this level," he said, adding, unfortunately they want to spoil their own career at this level. Fourth-year resident doctors will be terminated first from tomorrow morning and subsequently senior resident doctors followed by newly appointed resident doctors.

According to the principal secretary, the doctors will be terminated from their respective universities, which means they will never be able to get registered again for any post-graduate course anywhere in the country. "Once the registration is terminated from the university, under no circumstances it will be revoked," he said.

An officer-bearer of Gujarat Association of Resident Doctors (GARD) said the government can't impose Esma on them as they are not government employees. "We are not regular government employees and we are only rendering services in the government hospital by getting stipend. Therefore, the step of the state government is illegal," said an officer-bearer of GARD. He said they had decided to start a free check-up camp for poor patients on civil hospital campus from Monday. In a statement, GARD said: "We will provide free diagnosis and treatment to poor patients at Civil hospital. The doctors are on strike as the state government is not interested in solving our issues, including hike in the stipend. It is unfortunate that the government is still not serious in resolving the issue after three days of strike."

GARD said the government was trying to use "undemocratic means" to force the doctors to withdraw the strike.

With agency inputs

Source: Dnaindia