Private hospitals reluctant to raise doctors’ salaries

Private-sector hospitals and private medical colleges are reluctant to raise salaries of young doctors and using delaying tactics instead of raising salaries of house officers, post-graduates and medical officers to Rs 24,000, 42,000 and 50,000 respectively, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Young doctors have given an ultimatum of two weeks to private-sector hospitals and private medical colleges to raise salaries at par with the pay raise given by the provincial governments to young doctors otherwise the Young Doctors Association (YDA) would be “forced” to issue a white paper against private-sector medical colleges and necessary details of salaries already being offered has also been collected.
YDA central office bearers said that the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) had directed all private-sector medical colleges to pay the same amount to house officers and post-graduate residents as was being paid in the public sector but none of the colleges paid any heed to these instructions and the PMDC should have intervened to cancel the registration of these colleges.
The doctors said that the number of private institutions were giving Rs 14,000 to house officers and Rs 10,000 to post-graduates and had not created seats for them. YDA office-bearers said that these institutions were charging Rs 2.5 million from each graduate but unable to pay them Rs 24,000 and Rs 42,500 during house job and postgraduate residency. The young doctors said that they will be forced to get registration of private-sector medical colleges cancelled through PMDC if salaries were not raised.