Daily Times

In the past few years, doctors, and especially “young” doctors have spent more time on roads than in hospitals. They were on roads for pay scales and job structuring, and recently, to demonstrate their grievances against the new policy for admission in post-graduation programmes. Is this the right way to demonstrate any kind of grievance? Where are their medical ethics? They get subsidies for education, and even then they protest. Patients are dying because of them, and people on roads face problems because of traffic jams. There used to be some brief news headlines whenever young doctors were out on roads protesting, but there is no real attempt to find out why they are protesting on roads, which is not the right platform.

The issues of pay scales and job structure have always remained unresolved for doctors. A doctor after completing five years of education in college and one-year house job experience is usually inducted in BPS-17, and spends his/her life in an attempt to get a promotion due to non-availability of job structure. There are a very few doctors who are able to get a higher employment grade, or administrative or teaching slots. And this situation becomes worse when it is compared to positions held by bureaucrats, who easily get promotions, and their job structure ensures a very positive and practical career growth. The perpetuation of this unfair practice is one reason why doctors protest. And interestingly, it is not only doctors; everyone in the public sector is struggling due to the phenomenon of non-availability of better service structure.

In other words, it is another “milestone” for Pakistan where the educated class is fighting for its genuine rights. Yes, it is true that many doctors have private practices, which is nothing objectionable when the official allowance of a doctor is not satisfactory in comparison to what doctors earn in most other countries. This is one of the basic reasons of dissatisfaction among medical professionals, and although government representatives give many assurances after every protest, the issue remains unresolved.

The ongoing situation shows government’s apathy towards the health sector. People often criticise doctors for protests and road blockage, but they seldom criticise government for its shoddy and shortsighted policy-making. The new central induction policy is another perfect example of government’s myopic policy-making skills. According to this new policy, the post-graduation programme of doctors will be centralised, and seats of post-graduation programmes will also be reduced to 1,000. On an average, almost 3,000 to 3,500 doctors graduate annually. If the total number of seats is 1,000, where would the remaining 2,000 doctors go? No answer has been provided for that.

Moreover, according to this policy, trainee doctors will spend a year or two in basic health units. And that is another flawed idea of the policy. Everyone knows the condition of basic health units in villages and small towns. How can a trainee doctor learn in such awful circumstances where neither a senior doctor nor the infrastructure is available? The policy makers should spend some of their precious time in the emergency wards of the big government hospitals of Lahore to understand the situation of basic health units. Almost 90 percent patients are referred to big cities like Lahore due to non-availability of resources and medical equipment.

It is true that the conditions of basic health units would improve due to availability of doctors, but that would not resolve the problem. It is like someone gets the driver’s job in a company where a car is not available. Old students of any medical institution would also not be able to benefit from this policy, as the institution is not bound to give preference to old students. That depicts another weakness of policy-making, as around the globe students get the advantage of being an old student at the time of a new admission, as even institutions like the Harvard Law School give preference to
its alumni.

Lastly, the ban on honorary training would also create problems. In the past, some doctors did honorary training during their post-graduation programmes due to non-availability of paid seats. In this way not only doctors got some learning experience, but also government or the training hospital was able to overcome the problem of low number of staff members.

Looking at the above-given factors one thing could be said with certainty that in the case of implementation this policy would give negative results. The policy-makers are following the models of western world where central induction is successful due to high quality infrastructure and better health facilities. Centralising a weak system would never resolve the problem. It is possible that the ongoing brain drain of doctors would also increase. There is past and present evidence that many doctors and members of the educated class are settling in other countries for the sake of a better and prosperous future.

The writer is a freelance columnist, and can be reached at raja_4_92@live.com