Pending Salaries, Unrepaired Toilets: Hindu Rao Doctors Threaten Administration To Withdraw Elective Services From Feb 27

The resident doctors' association of civic-run Hindu Rao Hospital in Delhi has issued a call to the hospital administration that its members will withdraw from "all elective services February 27 onwards" if their demands related to pending salaries and other issues are not met.

Falling under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, resident doctors of the H R hospital conducted a "pen-down protest" from 9 am to 11 am on February 6. A member of the HRH's Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) described the pen-down protest as a means "to raise demand for the unpaid salaries and other issues related to working conditions such as non-availability of drinking water, clean toilets with working flush, and lack of bed linen in the wards and duty doctor rooms."

The association has now issued a call saying its members will withdraw from all elective services from February 27 over unpaid salaries and other issues. "We are suspending our pen-down assembly and protests and with great pain are giving hospital administration the notice for withdrawal of all resident doctors from all elective services from 27/02/2023 onwards," the association said in a letter to the HRH's medical superintendent.
    
"Our demands were met with a favorable response from the hospital administration and our two months' salary till December 15 was paid which brought much-needed immediate relief. Thus, we suspended our protests for 10 days. But now, our salary till Jan 15, 2023, is still unpaid and we have not seen any concrete steps towards systemic reform in salary disbursal and regularisation," the association said.

The RDA has also alleged that doctors, hospital staff, and patients have to buy "expensive bottled water from outside" and that its toilets have "not been repaired".

The letter dated February 18 added that they want a "permanent solution" to the problem of chronically irregular and delayed salary disbursal" and working conditions that are plaguing the welfare of resident doctors and patient care in the hospital.

(With PTI inputs)