Around 100 senior and junior resident doctors of East Delhi Municipal Corporation-run Swami Dayanand Hospital have been terminated from work for going on a strike over alleged non-payment of salaries.
“All SRs (senior residents) and JRs (junior residents) of your department will be considered terminated WEF 09:00 am 04.02.22 and fresh interviews will be conducted accordingly,” says a circular issued by the medical superintendent of the hospital.
All other contractual doctors and DNB residents (junior doctors who work as residents while studying for their specialisation) have been marked absent for the three days that the hospital has gone on a complete shutdown and even emergency services have come to a halt.
The hospital is close to the Delhi government-run Guru Teg Bahadur hospital and the patients are being referred there.
All workers in the hospital, including doctors, nurses and sanitation workers, have allegedly not been paid salaries since October. “We have been writing to the administration. Some of us were staying away from work in the beginning of January after which the salary for October was released for all of us. But, the salary for three months is still pending and even senior doctors have joined the strike now, along with resident doctors and nurses. However, the administration is looking for the weakest links and singling them out to punish them for the strike,” said Dr Qasim from the resident doctors association of the hospital.
Salary delays have been a constant issue at all north and east corporation-run hospitals, with the staff getting paid only once every three to four months. Many strikes have been conducted by residents as well as senior faculty members of these hospitals. In fact, doctors from Hindu Rao hospital were on strike for salaries when the larger national strike demanding urgent counselling for NEET-PG began in November.
The medical superintendent of the hospital, however, said that many of the protesting resident doctors are not owed salaries. “We conduct fresh interviews each month to hire resident doctors for a contractual 44 days, and their services are thereafter extended if they want to stay based on the reports of their work from the heads of departments. Many of the striking doctors have not completed one month of their service and are not owed salaries. I know a few joined the services only five days back. If they join back work, I can at least run the emergency services,” said Dr Rajni Khedwal, medical superintendent of the hospital.
However, the order applies not just to new joinees but all resident doctors, even those who have been working since October.