Delhiites! You need to be prepared for another token strike! The resident doctors of the public hospitals are holding a strike to demand an increase in the allowances and salaries they are getting and they want a revision of the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission. Patients heading to the public hospitals need to look for an alternative today, it seems.
Nearly 15,000 resident doctors spread across 41 Government Delhi hospitals form The 
(FORDA). This Federation had written an appeal to Mr. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister, appealing with him to revise the 7th Pay Commission recommendations as they felt that these were “particularly discriminating to doctors”.
Dr Narayan Dabas, convenor, FORDA has given a statement that “If our demands are not fulfilled, we will go on an indefinite strike from June 1.”
On Wednesday, Arun Panda, the additional secretary in the health ministry, held negotiations with the medical superintendents of Safdarjung, Ram Manohar Lohia (RML), and Lady Hardinge hospitals to discuss the issue.
A senior official of the ministry has also stated that they have arranged for the hospitals to resort to contingency plans to deal with trauma cases and emergencies, in the meanwhile. The senior doctors have been requested to handle the situation as the official admits that they are trying to talk to FORDA and reason out the situation with them.
The Federation had been against the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission and they had been opposing it since November last year. They wanted the non-Practicing Allowance (NPA) to be increased from 25% to 40%. FORDA highlighted that this allowance had been reduced to 20% in the 7th Pay Commission recommendations.
Dr Pankaj Solanki, President of FORDA has stated “The basic pay and NPA were merged together while calculating House Rental Allowance (HRA) earlier, but this has now been omitted and HRA will be calculated only with 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.”
