KARACHI: Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister (CM) on Information, Law and Anti-Corruption, Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Wednesday evening said that protesting young doctors have announced to end their strike following successful negotiations.
Talking to media persons, flanked by representatives of the protestors, Dr Peer Manzoor and Dr Ahmed Sultan, at the Sindh Assembly, he said that the provincial health department has agreed to genuine and bonafide demands of protesting doctors.
He assured that OPDs of all hospital would be opened and that Sindh doctors would be given same allowances as in Punjab. “The government’s top priority was to provide relief to the patients,” he said.
To a question, he replied that health professionals come under essential services and they have discussed devising a mechanism so as to avoid strikes in future with the doctors’ representatives
He also said that doctors have agreed to voluntarily serve fourteen hours instead of twelve which was a commendable gesture.
Earlier, the strike entered its third day while thousands of patients suffer intense difficulties due to the shutdown of Outpatient Departments (OPDs) in government hospitals across Sindh.
Reportedly, the physicians were demonstrating against the provincial government of Sindh for failing to increase their salaries, allowances and health insurance.
On Tuesday, two patients died due to unavailability of treatment at the hospitals in Naushehro Feroze.
Importantly, doctors had given a call of a sit-in on January 31, outside the chief minister house in Sindh, if their demands were not met.
The striking doctors had demanded that the provincial government increase their salaries, allowances and health insurance to the same levels as those offered to government doctors in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab.
The OPDs of hospitals in Hyderabad, Khairpur, Tharparkar, Nawabshah and other cities remained close as doctors associated with the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) and other similar organisations boycotted their duties.
The doctors at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), National Institute of Child Health (NICH), Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK), Lyari General Hospital and other government-run hospitals had held demonstrations outside their institutes and chanted full-throat slogans in favour of their demands.
