No Stipend since 6 months, Kolhapur DY Patil Medical College MBBS interns on strike

Kolhapur: Demanding their rights to stipend, the MBBS Interns at Kolhapur based Dr. D Y Patil Medical College have initiated strike from Thursday since their rights were continuously denied by the authorities.

Already the doctors have approached the Vice Chancellor of D Y Patil Medical University and they are also planning to write to the National Medical Commission (NMC) and the Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

The medicos are upset since they have not received their stipend for almost six months after they joined the internship. Reportedly, this issue of non-payment of stipend is not only limited to DY Patil Medical College only and medicos belonging to other Deemed Universities are facing similar kind of problems.

Issuing a Statement in this regard, the State Convener of IMA-JDN Maharashtra. Dr Indranil Deshmukh mentioned, "The medical interns of Dr. D.Y Patil Medical College, kolhapur are on strike from two days for the non payment of stipend.They waited for the response from official authorities from past 5 months neither did they consider the basic rights nor did they reply to them,so they started with the strike. It's not just an issue only of this college,it's happening in many deemed colleges. IMA-JDN Maharashtra stands in solidarity with their demands and requests Hon'ble Health Minister Mansukh Mandviya ji to take some quick action and soon we are releasing a support letter."

Also Read: No stipend for 7 months: First year PG Medicos of Osmania Medical College to boycott duties from September 12

Medical Dialogues had been reporting about the issue of stipend disparity and the continuous demands for a Uniform Stipend Policy across India. Even though the erstwhile MCI had introduced the amendments, they could not materialized because MCI got replaced by the National Medical Commission (NMC). Following this, the demands for a uniform stipend policy has been raised by doctors time and again and the MBBS students belonging to private institutes also continued complaining of not getting stipend by their parent institutes. However, nothing has been done yet by the apex medical regulator to solve this issue.

Meanwhile, last year, the UG medical education board of NMC had released the Draft Regulations For Rotational Compulsory Regulations, 2021. Regarding stipend, the Draft mentioned that All Interns shall be paid stipend as fixed by the appropriate fee fixation authority applicable to the Institution/university/ state.

Therefore, the chances of the Interns doctors getting stipend for their service largely depends upon their concerned parent institutes.

Speaking about this, Dr. Deshmukh of IMA-JDN Maharashtra told Medical Dialogues, "Most of the Deemed-to-be Universities do not pay any stipend to the MBBS interns. In case of DY Patil Medical College Kolhapur, the medicos are on strike for two days because they did not get paid for their work for the last five months. However, they did not consider our basic right and as a result we had no option but to initiate the strike.

"We are also in talks with the Vice Chancellor of DY Patil, but he is telling us to wait for some days. But it is already six months and still we haven't received the payment. Therefore, we initiated the strike on the day before yesterday and continued it for eight hours boycotting all the services," he added.

Also Read: No stipend as per NMC norms: Maharashtra medical college interns on strike