M F AHMED
Daltonganj, Nov. 2: Decks have been cleared for the payment of salary to senior and junior resident doctors and other staff of the Medini Rai medical college hospital (MMCH) in Daltonganj.
The State Health, Medical, Education and Family Welfare Department, by invoking rule 87 of 2016 Jharkhand Treasury Code, has vested the power of drawing and disbursing with the acting medical superintendent cum professor of surgery, Dr. R D Nagesh of the Medini Rai medical college hospital in Daltonganj on Nov.1.
A notification regarding this has been issued by a senior official of the State Health, Medical, Education and Family Welfare Department, Alok Trivedi. lagatar24.com has a copy of this notification with it.
The senior and junior resident doctors here in the MMCH Daltonganj had gone on a strike on Monday (November 1), paralyzing the emergency services in the hospital. The strike made the management call the police to avoid any breach of patient – attendant tranquility in the campus.
The strike was done in protest against the nonpayment of salary over the period of five months to these residents.
One of the senior residents, Maqbool Ansari, said, “We ran out of patience when they found the government is not bothered about payment of their salaries. So, in a unanimous decision of senior and junior resident doctors, we struck work at the MMCH Daltonganj on Monday.”
The protesting resident doctors rued that their Durga Puja festival went cheerless for want of salary and now they won’t allow their Diwali festivities to be the same.
This correspondent sent an SOS WhatsApp message to the Additional Chief Secretary Health, Arun Kr Singh, and Secretary to the Chief Minister, Vinay Choubey, on Monday to make them aware of the mess and chaos that was going on in MMCH.
The two senior officials, taking a serious note of this correspondent’s SoS, sent in the larger interest of the ailing poor masses of Palamu, ensured the acting Medical Superintendent Dr R D Nagesh gets the power of drawing and disbursing (DD). By late afternoon of Monday, the health department issued a notification declaring Dr. Nagesh as the drawing and disbursing officer with immediate effect.
The government has asked Dr. Nagesh to act in strict adherence to the financial rules till further orders.
Dr. Nagesh on the matter said, “I was just a stop-gap superintendent. I was asked to work as an acting superintendent following the transfer of the then superintendent Dr K N Singh from here to Jamshedpur.”
He further said that now that he has been given the drawing and disbursing power, the salary situation will ease down as funds are available.
Normalcy has returned to MMCH following this outbreak of hope that the salary will soon be coming to the accounts of the unpaid doctors and other staff here.
