Doctors at Kerala Medical College Hospital have announced that they will be staging a protest on March 3 as they haven't received their increased salaries that have remained pending for the past few months. The doctors will be marking Wednesday as a 'cheating day,' as per a statement released by Dr S Binoy, State Secretary of the Kerala Government Medical College Teachers Association (KGMCTA), and Dr Nirmal Bhaskar, Secretary of the Association.
The statement said that the Kerala government is insulting doctors by not paying their pending allowances and salary. The statement states that when the government provided salary hikes and other allowances to employees in other sectors, the doctors, who neglected their own life to save citizens of the state during the pandemic, were given minimal allowances, which was “an insult to the community”.
The association alleged that their pay was to be originally revised in 2016, but it was delayed and pushed to 2020 due to government laxity. The doctors at the Medical College had started their protest in January 2021 to get the pending allowances and salary arrears. The association also said that they have tried not to trouble the patients through their strikes.
“We have not troubled the public by suspending our duties but the government has taken advantage of the humanitarian approach of the doctors,” they said.
When the doctors were about to start an indefinite strike, the Health Minister had held a negotiation meeting in which they were promised the salary hikes and allowances, and asked to postpone the strike.
"But that was a trick by the government to save their face. Another meeting was also held with the Health Minister and Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac. They promised to meet our demands," the statement said, adding that the government has “forgotten” that when they received many awards for COVID-19 management, it was also the result of the hard work of over 2,000 doctors from the Medical Colleges.
KGMCTA also said that it was their efforts that had contributed to reducing the COVID-19 death rate in Kerala.