Pending salary: Association backs NDMC resident doctors, threatens mass resignation
An association of medics has extended support to the resident doctors of two municipal hospitals in Delhi and threatened mass resignation if their “reasonable demands” for payment of salaries pending for three months are not met within a week.
The Municipal Corporation Doctors’ Association (MCDA) also wrote to Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, seeking his intervention on the issue.
A copy of the letter has been marked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The resident doctors at NDMC’s 450-bedded Kasturba Hospital and Hindu Rao Hospital have claimed that they have not been paid since March. Many doctors and other staff have tested positive for COVID-19 at both the hospitals.
MCDA president R R Gautam said on Friday that doctors are putting their lives and family in danger every day. “Being the frontline COVID healthcare workers, they should be paid their due salaries.”
“Our association fully and unconditionally support the reasonable demands of the resident doctors’ associations, and have further decided that if the salaries of the three months of all doctors are not paid in a week, then we may also be forced to resign en masse from our government services,” the association said in the letter.
If not that, “then we may be granted permission to take VRS on a mass level,” it added.
On Wednesday, the resident doctors of the colonial-era Kasturba Hospital threatened to resign en masse. On Thursday, the Delhi High Court initiated a PIL on the issue.
Jai Prakash, chairman of the standing committee of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, which runs both the hospitals said, “The matter is being resolved”.
“Representatives of the RDAs of the two hospitals met me on Thursday. We have assured them we will try to pay their due salaries, if not at once, for one month right now, and then gradually for subsequent months,” he said.
“We have explained to them that the MCD is not getting revenues in this coronavirus situation, so they must consider our constraints too,” Prakash said.
