Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has called an emergency meeting of the Medical Education Commission. The Prime Minister called an emergency meeting after the resident doctors started protesting by stopping all other services except emergency.
The resident doctors have demanded that the doctors working in private medical colleges should be given subsistence allowance like the government and duty hours should be fixed.
Prime Minister Oli called the resident doctors at the Prime Minister's residence Baluwatar on Thursday night before calling the emergency meeting.
Dr. Sesharaj Ghimire, coordinator of the Safe Workplace Struggle Committee for Health Workers, said that the discussion on Thursday night was positive.
Medical Education Commission sources said that the agenda of the emergency meeting called today is to determine the subsistence allowance of resident doctors and the duration of their duty on a monthly basis.
Medical colleges have been making resident doctors work more hours than prescribed by the Labor Act, so they also demand that the duty period should be fixed. In the demand letter put forward by the Sangharsh Committee, it is mentioned that there should be a maximum of 80 hours of duty in a week, a maximum of 2 times a week of 24 hours of duty, leave after each duty, maternity leave, annual 21 days of ordinary and 7 days of study leave. The
committee had protested two years ago and demanded to give allowances like the government. At that time, there was an agreement between the Sangharsh Committee and the Ministry of Health to provide subsistence allowance as per the demand. The Ministry sent the Medical Education Commission to implement the agreement.
After the Commission decided to proceed with the process of seat allocation in private medical colleges only after providing the specified subsistence allowance, the directors objected. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli directed the ministers to resolve the dissatisfaction of the medical college administrators.
