JPMC house officers protest for salaries

Karachi
Dozens of house officers appointed at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) earlier this year staged a protest demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club on Monday to demand the payment of salaries pending for the past five months.
The house officers asserted they were not in favour of going on a strike since it would cause immense problems for poor patients, but they said they felt compelled to warn that if their salaries were not released in two weeks then they would have no other option but to boycott work.
“We are graduates of Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU) and started working as House Officers at the JPMC in May 2015. Since our appointment, we have not been paid a single penny. We don’t even have enough to pay the bus fare to come to work,” said Dr Samia, one of the protesting House Officers. “For the past five months, we have been borrowing money from parents and relatives to meet our daily expenses. We report to our jobs every day, work tirelessly in wards to serve the humanity. But we seem to be doing it for free.”
The enraged doctors said they would be unable to continue with their work if salaries were not paid and would be compelled to go on a phase-wise strike so the authorities take warning in time.
“In the first phase we will boycott the wards, then operation theatres and out-patient departments, and in the later stages we will boycott the emergency services,” they said.
The protesting house officers said the government by not paying them was sending out the wrong message to students of medicine, who would be discouraged to enter the field fearing financial troubles in return for serving humanity.
JPMC officials claimed that all the House Officers hired “on merit” were being paid their remuneration, but all those which the management was “forced” to recruit were not being paid.
“All these house officers had given affidavits that they would not demand salaries and work on honorary basis at the hospital,” said JPMC’s deputy director Javed Jamali. “They were hired on the forced recommendations from higher officials and they don’t deserve any honorarium.”
However, the protesting doctors denied Dr Jamali’s claim. “We were hired on merit and we gave no affidavits. Dr Jamali is misleading the media and the provincial government,” Dr Samiullah Gil, a spokesman for Young Doctors Association (YDA) of JPMC clarified.