YDA continues protests

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The Young Doctors Association Punjab on Wednesday held protest demonstrations in front of the Punjab Insitutue of Cardiology (PIC) and Punjab Dental College (PDC) to pressurise the Punjab government for their service structure demands.
The demonstration continued for around three hours and the participants raised slogans in support of their service structure.
However, doctors were remained peaceful and not any mishap was occurred.
A spokesman of the YDA Punjab Dr Muddassar Ahmed Khan claimed that protest demonstrations would continue till the acceptance of their demand. He said the YDA had started to engage civil society and other political parties to boost their drive for service structure. He also informed that all arrangements had been finalized for sit-in in front of the Chief Minister House on November 7. He warned that if the Punjab government used force against their peaceful protest, the YDA might go on strike.

Plea against YDA’s strike adjourned
The Lahore High Court on Wednesday adjourned hearing of a plea against the Young Doctors Association strike till November 2.
Justice Ijaz ul Ahsan was hearing the petition filed by Judicial Activism Panel, a public interest litigation firm.
Earlier, Additional Advocate General Punjab Faisal Zaman submitted that the committee, set up to resolve young doctors issues, had finalized 80 percent recommendations and work would be completed soon. The petitioner’s counsel pointed out that the young doctors were observing strike despite the court orders. However, YDA and its counsel did not appear before the court today. The court adjourning the matter till November 2 sought a report regarding progress on young doctors issues from the government.
The petitioner, in his petition, contended that doctors’ strike was not only against PMDC’s code of ethics but also a violation of fundamental human rights.
He pleaded the court that directions be issued to PMDC to cancel licenses of young doctors.
Earlier, the court had ordered doctors to resume their work in hospitals and also suspended terminations and transfers of doctors by the Punjab government besides ordering to start negotiation again.

GCDA lays down demands to LHC
During the hearing of Service Structure case of doctors General Cadre Doctor’s Association (GCDA) council Mian Ehsan Ul Haq Sajid on Wednesday requested the Lahore High Court (LHC) that the issue of promotions of General Cadre Doctors, who are major stakeholders, with their strength more than 14000 across Punjab, should be prioritized.
Ehsan Ul Haq argued that the policies of previous governments have crashed the health delivery system of Punjab, and it is the time for its revival. Whoever will do so will get the credit, and it seems that government, who have put so much efforts in revamping of service structure will not let it wasted, he added.
While briefing the court Ehsan Ul Haq said that many of the issues have been in a process of solution and some needs fine tuning and further discussion. This is a very serious matter and must come to a logical end, he added. He further said that the General Cadre doctors abide by the rulings of Supreme Court and High Court and are always there to help poor patients of this province, but at the same time they expect that issue pertaining to promotions and other key matters of General Cadre doctors be resolved at the earliest. The practical solution to the issue is that the doctors served for more than 16 years and deserve to be promoted to grade 20, based on their length of service should at least they should be promoted to grade 19, similarly deadlock at the level of Grade19 should be cleared.
He said consensus has been made that doctors having fellowship will be given an allowance equivalent to PhD while those degrees having equivalence to MPhil will be given the allowance equivalent to MPhil. Similarly a window of promotion will be kept open for General Cadre doctors with 50 % seats of the specialist and 25% seats of consultants to be given for General Cadre doctors.