General Cadre Doctors Association President and Pakistan Medical Society Chairman Dr Masood Sheikh said that unless the general cadre doctors who have been serving for the last 15- 20 years are given their due promotion to appropriate scales, it will not be justified to induct a medical officer in grade 18, otherwise the seniority of thousand of the serving general cadre doctors would be at stake.
He added that the issue of doctors was not that the service structure was not present, but it has not been implemented in letter and spirit and there was a need of correction in its implementation and also modification in the exiting four tier service structure and making it more doctors friendly. He said if the flaws in the exiting services structure were corrected then 13,000 general cadre doctors who were waiting for their promotion for the last 16-20 year would get its benefit and will be in a position to serve the nation with a new spirit. He was addressing the emergent meeting of GCDA on the current issue of service structure. He added that while increasing the salaries it should also be kept in mind that the increase is proportionate for different grades and should not just constitute giving perks to doctors who had just joined the service.
Sheikh said the GCDA had formed a committee to evaluate the issues of service structure of general cadre doctors comprising of Dr Haq Nawaz Bharwana, Dr Masood Sheikh, Dr Arif Iftikhar, Dr Nazeer Choohan, Dr Rana Rafique, Dr Riaz, Dr Amir, Dr Asad Shah, Dr Alia and Dr Fauzia. The service structure committee had charted out four points agenda for the General Cadre Doctors that would solve most of their problems.
The points are:
1. THERE SHOULD BE A REAL TIME SCALE PROMOTION: for the general cadre doctors which means that like other services they should be promoted to grade 18 after a period of 7 years and then to 19 after a period of 12 years and to 20 after a period of 17 years respectively as was valid for other services. He said any delay in the promotion of doctors from grade 18 to 19 or 20 should be rectified and they should be promoted with out delay. He added that any one that has collective worked for 12 years in grade 17 and 18 can be promoted to 19, and after 1 year if they fulfil the criteria of 17 years then they could be promoted to the scale of grade 20. He added that any delay occurred in the last decade should be rectified as one time dispension as it had been conducted in cadre change in last few months. He added that without giving the right scale for the existing general cadre doctors and shifting them to the scale that they deserve, no change could acceptable in the service structures.
2. REAFFIXING OF THE SEAT FROM GRADE 18-20: Many medical college and other health institutes had been added in the last 5-10 years in which hundreds of the post of grade 17 doctors had been created. Even per existing four-tier formula, there should be proportionate increase in the seat of grade 18, 19 and 20 which is called reaffixing of the seats. If this is done then many seats of grade 19 and 20 will be created and will help in promotion of the general cadre doctors.
3. NEW SENIORITY LIST SHOULD BE MADE: In the past weeks many doctors have been promoted to the level of assistant professor and also to the specialist cadre and senior registrar because of which many seats were vacated. These seats should also be excluded from the seniority list.
4. A NEW PROPORTION OF THE FOUR TIER FORMULA: GCDA demanded that the government of the Punjab had notified a new recommendation for the demands of Punjab Lecturer and Professors Association for modification of the existing four formula like wise the formula for general cadre doctors may be revised from the existing 50:34:15: 1 into 40:30:25:5 in BS-17, 18, 19, & 20 with immediate effect.
