Daily Times

The Young Doctor’s Association Punjab (YDA) is literally holding the province’s healthcare system hostage, but not necessarily unfairly. The strike called by the junior medical professionals aims to address many glaring issues such as raising abysmally low salaries, regularisation, medical facilities for the families of young doctors and job security among others. These demands have been voiced by the YDA for as long as a year now but medical professionals are only now making their angry voices heard, unfortunately, at the cost of innocent lives. Some 17 people have died because of the strike as the young professionals have closed the outpatient and emergency departments in various government hospitals, denying the sick emergency medical attention. As many as seven children have died due to lack of medical care. The YDA is careful to maintain that it is the junior doctors who are participating in this protest and that no senior doctor has been barred from attending to those most needy. On Friday and Saturday, many thousands of young doctors have resigned across the province.

It is no secret that doctors in Pakistan are overworked to an appalling degree, paid less than even police constables, guaranteed no medical coverage and have been made to work without pay on a number of occasions. This movement therefore has been a long time coming and has been echoing for change for months now. So why has the Punjab government been sitting back nonchalantly, allowing the situation to grow so devastatingly out of control? On Thursday night, the Punjab government failed to concede to the YDA’s demands with a no-show by Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, and now even more doctors have left the emergency wards in many government hospitals. The Punjab government has promised that the salaries will be revised in the upcoming budget (July 2011) but the doctors want this promise to be inked as, in the past, a similar such promise saw the CM pay the doctors mere peanuts to quieten down the protest movement. With the Punjab government citing the demanded salary raise (Rs 20,000-30,000) as too big a strain on the provincial budget (some Rs 26 billion) and sporting a very hard attitude to boot, it does not seem that the YDA is about to retreat anytime soon.

For the Punjab government to allow the situation to grow from bad to worse where patients are not getting life-saving treatment, is a testament to appalling management. The doctors’ demands are understandable; what is not is the attitude of the Punjab government, blustering and threatening young doctors with dismissal in one breath, and conceding some salary raise in the other, neither of which has served any other purpose than stoking the fire. *