Health Ministry cannot intervene to solve pay parity of MBBS interns: Mansukh Mandaviya
New Delhi: The long-pending crisis regarding the pay parity between the government and private medical college interns is unlikely to end by intervention of the Union Health Ministry as the Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has expressed such opinion recently.
Such indications were given by the Health Minister in a reply to the Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam on March 11, reports The Hindu.
Medical Dialogues has been reporting about the huge pay disparity between the MBBS interns at Government and Private medical colleges in India. Several instances of Private Medical Colleges were found where the management was paying no or minimal stipend to the students.
Although initiatives were taken by erstwhile Medical Council of India to end this disparity, later MCI was replaced by NMC and the problems remained unsolved.
In the Draft regulations for Rotational Compulsory Regulations 2021, released in April, NMC, the apex medical body mentioned, "All interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate fee fixation authority applicable to the institution/university/state."
As per the latest media report by The Hindu, the Minister informed, "The Commission has informed the Ministry that as per Section 3(a) of the National Medical Commission (Compulsory Rotating Medical Internship) Regulations 2021, all the interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate authority applicable to the institution/University or State."
The Minister also stated in his reply to Mr. Viswam that the Centre grants payment of stipend only to the interns undergoing compulsory rotational internship in hospitals/medical institutions under its administrative control which gets revised bi-annually with the approval of the Department of Expenditure.
In this regard, the last revision was made on July 7, 2021 and currently the MBBS interns at government institutes are getting a monthly stipend of Rs 26,300 with effect from January 1, 2020, added the Minister.
Such a stand of the Union Health Ministry and the NMC is significant in a context where recently the apex medical body published guidelines for the inclusion of foreign medical graduates in the Indian system and directed the institutes to give them equal stipend and other facilities equivalent to the Indian medical graduates undergoing training in government medical colleges.
The daily adds that the public health professionals while pointing out that magnanimity to be an welcome step to assure the Ukraine-returned graduates, mentioned that similar approach is not taken for the Indian medical students enrolled in private institutes of this country.
Also Read: Should there be uniform stipend for MBBS interns ? Health ministry asks NMC
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