Increased stipend for young doctors demanded

ABBOTTABAD: The People’s Doctors Forum (PDF), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has asked the provincial government to include the name of Trainees Medical Officers (TMOs) and House Officers (HOs) for the provision of increased stipend as notified earlier.

In a statement issued here, PDF General Secretary Dr Daud Iqbal, who is also the spokesman for the forum, said the health minister had notified a new category for the Abbottabad district in July this year. It had increased the allowance and stipend structure of the employees of the Ayub Teaching Hospital, he recalled.

The PDF office-bearer stated that all the employees of category B have been getting stipend/allowance of category B except the TMOs and HOs who had been disappointed after being deprived of these incentives despite being frontline workers and part of the major workforce of the hospital. Dr Daud Iqbal said the doctors had been protesting peacefully for the past two weeks and had sent written applications to the health and Finance Department.

He said they had held repeated meetings with the administration of the Ayub Teaching Hospital to demand the Health Department authorities to consider them for the stipends. The PDF representative lauded the role of the young doctors during COVID-19 who even lost their lives while serving the patients.