KARACHI: More than 300 house officers at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) have been deprived of their monthly stipend for the past three months, it emerged on Thursday.

The house officers have also recently held a demonstration outside the hospital for immediate release of their stipends. However, their grievances are yet to be addressed by the relevant authorities.

Speaking to Dawn, a group of house officers said they hadn’t received a single penny since they took up their jobs despite multiple reminders to concerned officials, including the health secretary.

Demonstration held outside the hospital for immediate release of stipends

“We have been constantly raising this issue with the health department officials as well as the hospital administration but have received no positive reply yet,” said Kinza, a Sindh Medical College (SMC) graduate and JPMC house officer, who participated in Tuesday’s demonstration.

The protest wasn’t a source of inconvenience for patients as it was held after the doctors had finished their duties, she added.

Sharing his concerns, another house officer, on condition of anonymity, said: “A total of 350 house officers are affected by this delay. We demand that this issue be immediately resolved. It has now become very difficult to continue our jobs because most of us are solely dependent on this stipend to meet our day to day expense.”

The delay, according to these house officers, was also affecting their work as they functioned under a lot of pressure.

Some doctors even alleged that the delay in the release of stipends was on the part of the hospital administration as a high health department official had told them that they had transferred a major portion of the required funds to the JPMC.

“While there are 350 house officers working on SMC seats at the JMPC, the funds reportedly released are for 246 doctors. The number of SMC seats had been increased to 350 a decade ago,” said a house officer, alleging that this gap existed because of the lack of coordination between the Sindh health department and the JPMC.

It is noteworthy that the medical graduates of Sindh receive lower monthly stipends (Rs30,000) as compared to their counterparts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Rs60,000) and Punjab (Rs45,000).

“There are neither allowances nor appropriate cadre and should be at Grade-17,” they complained.

Concerned officials were not available for comment.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2018