There are currently around 4,000 resident doctors in Nepal. It is the largest group of doctors working in Nepal. Resident doctors have the most responsibility in all major government hospitals and all medical college hospitals in Nepal. They work continuously for 36 to 72 hours in the service of patients without saying anything about hunger or sleep. Without them these hospitals cannot function.

Neglect of the state

These doctors have been neglected by the state for a long time. The work they do is called study instead of work. As planned, the state has arranged for the group that works the most in the hospital to work at low wages. Can a resident physician be employed as a student for 36-72 consecutive hours ? Including Saturdays, they get only 14 days off a year. That means 350 working days in a year. Neither maternity leave nor kazkiriya leave . Moreover, the state has made a legal arrangement to collect 2.3 lakh study fees from the doctor saying that this day and night work is only study. 10 years ago this fee was 1 crore. 

If we calculate the exploitation of doctors by the non-government medical colleges of Nepal, then the amount of money that can buy half of the medical colleges of Nepal will come out. The government is still stuck on the profit and loss of the medical college. There was no communication about the loss to the doctor. 

After the state has arranged for doctors to be trained in this way, the medical college has taken a much larger number of resident doctors than required to operate their hospitals. How many medical colleges have sent district-by-district as health camps for 084 election campaign instead of hospital work.

result of exploitation

In this way, doctors who work 350 days a year, 24 hours a day will get 20,000 per month and on the contrary, they will be able to charge 2.3 lakh phi from the same doctor. That is why, now the owner of one medical college has bought up to 3 medical colleges. Even in the list of organizations that pay more revenue, the name of the medical college comes up. Businessmen are therefore scrambling to invest in medical education. In this way, if there is any other business where people can be made to work more than the limit given by the labor law and the person who works on the contrary is also paid, then there would have been a similar struggle. 

But this arrangement has given the doctor nothing but exploitation. Doctors who have completed 5 years of MBBS by paying 50 lakhs have to be prepared to be exploited by the state and medical colleges if they want to work and study in Nepal. According to the current policy, the doctor understands that the main job of the doctor is not to treat the patient but to pay the money to the private company and the college. In this way, if you live in Nepal, you must be prepared to be cheated, so thousands of doctors go abroad from Nepal every year. The advantage of doctors going abroad is again to the medical college itself. Due to shortage of doctors, the management of the medical college advocates increasing the number of seats even though the infrastructure is low.

Efforts to solve and the way forward

The Safe Workplace Struggle Committee for Health Workers formed by resident doctors associations has been working on the labor exploitation of resident doctors. The state had agreed with us in October 2080 that we would maintain uniformity in subsistence allowance. I clearly remember that the then Home Minister Narayankaji Shrestha said believe me in that conversation. The Nepalese doctor waited for one and a half years.  The task force of the Ministry of Health, formed on the initiative of the

committee, had directed the Medical Education Commission that the living allowance of resident doctors should be at least the same as that of the government. When the private medical college refused to implement the decision, the Ministry of Health and Education formed another task force. Although the working group also suggested that the subsistence allowance of resident doctors should be at least the same as the government's, after the Minister of Health and Education fixed the subsistence allowance at 25,000 to 35,000 without even discussing it with the resident doctors, protests have started nationwide. If the government does not change its decision, it is certain that doctors from hospitals all over Nepal will come to the streets. Remember, resident doctors are only called students so as not to be given a fair price for their labor, they are not subject to the essential services provisions. 

The state should now be ready to solve the problem of resident doctors who are working against the laws of Nepal. First of all, the state should listen to the resident doctors and not those who say they represent the resident doctors. Acknowledging that a resident physician is not just a student but a full-time physician, this should also be mentioned in other laws on medical education and health care. 

The government will not gain a leg to implement the two committees formed under the Ministry of Health and Education and what the ministers have repeatedly said in the media regarding subsistence allowance. No matter how many working groups are formed, no one can say that doctors who work more than 100 hours a week should be paid less than 48 thousand. Rather, the government should not be left behind to stop the programs like insurance and concessions given by the government to many fraudulent organizations to disobey the government's decision. 

If the task force is formed time and time again, even if it means working according to the task force's suggestion, but the work is not done, the citizens will not have faith in the government's speech, such task force. No one will agree to sit and work in the working group. If the case of private colleges is to be taken into consideration, the free studies provided by them, government-like facilities and two years of service, by making sure that there is no exploitation, the students can be allowed to choose the students who study as an alternative. 

It is not enough to solve the problem of subsistence allowance of resident doctors, the issue of working time and leave should also be solved now. Therefore, it is welcome that the Minister of Education and Health will provide services and facilities to resident doctors as per the rules of the Labor Act, Nepal Medical Council and University. Providing all facilities (vacation fund, gratuity, maternity leave, maternity leave) to resident doctors and setting precise working hours should be implemented immediately by involving the Ministry of Labour, Education and Health and other stakeholders. 

Finally, the whole discipline of obtaining a degree by treating patients at the post-graduate level of medicine should be free of charge and with respectable remuneration. This category includes not only resident physicians but also critical care nursing students. These health workers treat patients using their expertise. You should get a fair wage for that work. It is wrong to charge study fees to health workers who earn money for hospitals by working with patients, saying 'you are just learning'.