KTH doctors go on strike

PESHAWAR: A day after damaging property at the Khyber Medical College (KMC) and its adjacent tertiary care hospital, the Khyber Teaching Hospital, the doctors on Tuesday observed a strike and suspended health services at the KTH.
The strike caused hardships to patients who had come from far-flung areas of the province.
The doctors didn’t attend the Out-Patient Departments as a mark of protest.
They had also warned senior doctors over attending the OPD to provide treatment to patients. Hundreds of patients who had come from various parts of the province had to return without being treated.
“I couldn’t understand the logic behind the strike. They staged a protest on Monday and blocked the University Road and caused hardship to the people. Later, they stormed the KTH and KMC for no obvious reason and damaged furniture and other equipment,” a senior faculty member of the hospital told The News.
Pleading anonymity, he said he had been hurt to see the doctors attacking own institutions.
“If there was any sense of humanity among them, they would not have attacked the institution where they were given medical education for five years to enable them to be called doctors in the society. I am sorry to say, but we are only producing money-making machines, not good human beings in our institutions,” the senior consultant remarked.
Another faculty member of the hospital said the government must take action against those involved in what he termed “barbarism” against the two known medical and health institutions and charge them under terrorism laws.
“The government should collect footage of the protesters from the CCTV cameras of the medical college and hospital and try them on terrorism charges,” he demanded. The trainee doctors of KMC had staged a protest on Monday. The protest turned violent and the protesters damaged infrastructure and smashed windowpanes of the KMC and KTH over an issue of seats for the House Officers.
According to officials of the hospital, all KMC graduates wanted to be accommodated in the KTH, which was not possible as there were only 149 seats each in KTH and LRH and 76 in HMC.
They interviewed 138 doctors for the seats available at the KTH and left 10 for the doctors of supplementary examination.
Thirty-four of 76 doctors were interviewed for HMC and 53 in LRH. Only five or six doctors have been left out and the hospital administration wanted to accommodate them in the LRH, but they insisted that they should be adjusted in the HMC.
A delegation of the doctors was sent to the HMC for holding a meeting with the administration to resolve the issue through dialogue when some doctors started spreading rumours that the HMC administration had refused to accommodate them and instigate the doctors into protesting.
On Tuesday, a delegation of 30 senior professors in the KTH held talks with the protesting doctors and tried to convince them to call off their strike, but they refused.
Provincial Secretary Health Mushtaq Jadoon formed an inquiry committee to probe the matter.
He told The News that the Health Department would initiate punitive measures against those involved in attacking the two institutions and suspending health services in the KTH.