The young doctors continued to observe strike for the sixth consecutive day and shut outdoor patient departments of the public sector hospital to register their protest in support of their demand for formation of service structure. According to General Secretary of the young doctors association, Dr Salman Kazmi, the Pakistani doctors are the most under paid professionals in the country and the salaries of doctors in Pakistan are less than the doctors of all neighbouring countries.
Punjab govt. has kept 17 billion rupees in the current budget to build new hospitals and medical colleges in the province without keeping a single penny for the doctors' service structure and special salary package in the budget. Probably the govt planed to run these hospitals without doctors.
There was not even a single vascular surgeon, rheumatologist, ICU specialists in the whole Punjab but the govt is not ready to accept their fault. 2000 doctors had left the country in search of better salary package last year and there is acute shortage of doctors in the province, he said. According to him, the YDA office bearers have expressed grave concern on the fact that the Punjab govt is wrongly projecting in the media that doctors in the province are the most paid among the govt servants.