YDA on the streets

The Young Doctors Association Punjab returned to the streets on Tuesday in multiple cities across the province. The Lahore Canal Bank Road was among four major roads blocked for over four hours in the provincial capital. Similar protests were held in other major cities, including Faisalabad, Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Gujrat and Rawalpindi. OPDs remained shut and minor operations were postponed. The doctors’ allegations, if proven to be true, give a picture of an elected leadership that is not committed fulfilling its commitments. After the last set of protests by the YDA Punjab, the Punjab government agreed to a 52-demand charter which included the promotion of around 4,000 doctors to the 18th scale. They have also claimed that the promised pay increases for medical officers, post-graduate trainees and house officers have yet to have taken place. The demand for regularised promotions in public hospitals is a very important one. The major dispute between doctors and the Punjab government had been the absence of a service structure for doctors. Doctors claim that only around 20 percent of the agreement has been fulfilled.
That so much of these agreements has not been fulfilled while the Punjab government is going ahead with a number of its pet road development projects, including the metro bus, indicates the lack of seriousness on questions of public health. The protests on March 31 could have been avoided if the government had sat down with YDA Punjab representatives to discuss a resolution of their complaints. Various press conferences and token protests complaining that the government had not fulfilled some of their major demands have been held since the start of the year. Doctors are now threatening an OPD strike which, like last time, could create a major PR disaster for both the government and the doctors. Hospital closures should be an option of last resort, but the ball is in the government’s court. Public sector doctors have also spoken of the larger crisis in public hospitals in the province. Protests in the first week of March concentrated on delays in the building of a Surgical Tower at Mayo Hospital, Lahore. Over 70 percent of patients in Punjab have to resort to private hospitals. The lack of medicines, basic equipment and beds are systemic issues in the province’s health system. The YDA Punjab’s protests hark us back to the memory of the emergency service closures after weeks of government indifference to their demands. The government needs to step in now to avoid a full-fledged strike. More than that, there is a serious need for the Punjab government to reconsider where health lies in its order of priorities.