Gujarat: 112 Doctors of GMERS transferred to Porbandar, Godhra Medical College

Ahmedabad: Due to a scarcity of doctors at different government medical colleges in the state, a decision to transfer 112 doctors working with various medical colleges under the Gujarat Medical Education and Research Society (GMERS) has been taken in hope of providing relief to the colleges.

Gujarat is already in huge downfall with a lack of specialist doctors at the hospitals and on top of that, the state is also facing a severe shortage of teaching staff and doctors at different medical colleges. Therefore, GMERS took the decision to transfer doctors from colleges under it which has enough doctors to function smoothly.

A total of 112 doctors teaching at various colleges including Gandhinagar, Sola, Gotri, and Dharpur-Patan medical colleges have been provided with the transfer letter including 55 doctors to Porbandar medical college and the rest to the newly set up Godhra medical college.

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The Gujarat government is expected to establish five new medical colleges in the state at a cost of Rs 2500 crore for the next academic year. In fact, GMERS has also released a transfer letter of 79 resident doctors to these upcoming medical colleges from other various colleges.

The newly-built medical colleges will also increase the medical seats for undergraduates to 6,200 from that of the existing 5700. The new medical colleges will come up at Rajpipla, Navsari, Godhra, Porbandar, and Morbi with 100 medical seats each. As per TOI Sources, these upcoming colleges had positions of senior resident doctors vacant on which the doctors have been transferred instead of recruiting new doctors.

Expressing disappointment over the transfer issue, the doctors who have been ordered to transfer were working at Godhra, Rajpipla, Morbi, Porbandar and Navsari medical colleges. Questions have been raised by the doctors as to why GMERS is transferring doctors instead of recruiting new candidates.

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Stating that the transfer decision will not help in the smooth functioning of any of the institutes, the doctors said "GMERS is in the process of recruiting doctors on an ad hoc basis for Class 2 posts and they should have been appointed to the vacant positions instead of transferring the senior doctors."

Over the past five years, the number of undergraduate medical colleges in the country has increased by 27.5 per cent and, of these, the increase in government colleges is almost double that of private medical colleges. However, the increased government medical colleges should have an adequate number of doctors but the scenario is pointing at a different angle after the transfer of the doctors.