Kolkata: Protests by several doctor organisations grew louder on Friday, a day after the health department came out with the posting order for 930 senior resident doctors. These organisations demanded a rollback of the order, calling it unethical and undemocratic, and saying it would promote nepotism and corruption.
A post-graduate trainee doctor has to serve a three-year bond service as senior residents in government health facilities upon completing the course. While such posting was allocated after a merit-based counselling, this time the posting was done by bypassing the counselling procedure. While the earlier norm was to post a senior resident in a teaching hospital in the first year, the Thursday order shows some posted in medical colleges while some were posted either in district, sub-divisional or superspeciality hospitals.
"By bypassing the counselling, the department acted in a clandestine manner. This was an attempt to hide the criteria for selection and to facilitate nepotism. While favoured candidates were rewarded with postings in Kolkata's medical colleges, others were dumped in district health centres," said orthopaedics professor Utpal Bandyopadhyay, state general secretary, Association of Health Service Doctors. The association wrote to the health secretary demanding cancellation of the Thursday order and the conduct of transparent counselling.
"Moreover, posting in a medical college for at least a year is required to be eligible to become faculties as per the National Commission. We will be organising movements against this change in posting SOP," said physician Biplab Chandra, general secretary, Medical Service Centre.
On Friday, a group of SRs, including anaesthesiologist Aniket Mahata, submitted a memorandum to the director of medical education in Swasthya Bhawan. "In addition, a doctor's right to obtain a NOC for pursuing higher education was revoked under the new rules," said Mahata.