New Delhi:
Patients at Delhi’s Hindu Rao Hospital will have tough time on Monday as the protesting doctors have decided to intensify their strike to ‘total shutdown’, a TOI report said today. With no word from the officials on any kind of reconciliation, the doctors will go from three-hour ‘pen down’ to total shutdown starting Monday. They are agitating against delayed salaries. The doctors have not received their salaries for last three months. The Times of India report said that in order to lessen the patients’ woes, the doctors will hold an open OPD outside hospital compound.
The Hindu Rao strike is part of the bigger fund crunch problem that the civic bodies are facing in Delhi. The TOI report says that the North Corporation needs around Rs 600 crore.
Around 450 resident doctors and interns of the hospital have repeatedly skipped their duties and are demanding payment of their salaries. "We will go on an indefinite strike from Monday, if the NDMC administration does not release our salaries," said Rahul Chaudhary, the president of Resident Welfare Association at the hospital. The municipal corporation, suffering financial crisis, has been facing hardships in regular payment of salaries to its employees, including sanitation workers and those serving in other departments. "We will pay the salaries as soon the funds are ready," said the NDMC officer.
Hindu Rao is the largest hospital operated by the NDMC. A medical college was also opened by the civic body in 2013.
