KalingaTimes Correspondent
Bhubaneswar, May 15: Orissa government finally woke up to the demands of the thousands of doctors on Thursday and passed a resolution with regard to the fulfillment of their demands. The decisions would come into force with immediate effect.

The government passed the resolution in the wake of a fresh round of threat from the doctors that they might revive their earlier decision to resign from service en masse if the government delayed a formal announcement about fulfillment of their demands.

In March, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had been able to make the doctors postpone their decision to resort to mass resignation by making a statement in the State Assembly two months ago assuring to fulfill the demands of the doctors working in government hospitals across the State.

However, the government had not taken a formal decision in this regard and the same had led to the doctors saying that they would decide on their future course of action at the 60 th annual meeting of the Orissa Medical Services Association scheduled to be held at Jeypore on May 19.

According to the resolution passed by the Health and Family Welfare Department, the entry level for Assistant Surgeons would be Junior Class-I with a scale of pay Rs 8,000-275-13,500.

The regular specialist of all categories of Orissa Medical Services Cadre holding the post of Specialist in the District and Peripheral government hospitals will be granted specialist allowance of Rs 3,000 per month in lieu of special pay, the resolution said.

The doctors conducting post-mortem shall be entitled to post-mortem allowance of Rs. 500 per case and such claim shall be preferred invariably quoting the police case number, the government said in the resolution.

“The post of doctor exclusively created for this purpose shall stand abolished with immediate effect,” the resolution said.

“With a view to preventing dislocation of health services in the tribal and backward districts of the State all sanctioned posts of specialist shall be filled up by suitable deployment in the peripheral and interior areas of the aforesaid districts on priority basis,” government said.