Work On Holidays, Get compensatory off days: New Odisha policy for its medical officers

Bhubaneswar: In good news for medical officers working in the state, working on public holidays will make them eligible for a compensatory day-off on another day. The government has issued guidelines to this effect to all medical colleges and hospitals in the state. 

Odisha Medical and Health Service (OMHS) officers can now avail off-days in lieu of notified public holidays, officials said. Health and family welfare secretary Shalini Pandit on Thursday issued the guidelines to the heads of all medical institutions.

According to the guidelines, an OMHS officer, who attended to duty on a designated public holiday(s) notified by the state government, will be allowed to avail an equal number of off-days in the same month. This facility, however comes with a caveat that compensatory day-offs can only be availed subject to availability of adequate human resources at the health facility.

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The superintendent or medical officer in-charge of the facility will have to make a roster for that month to ensure that all working hours are adequately covered, the guidelines said.

In case of non-availability of adequate staff in the facility, the medical officer in-charge can reduce the number of alternate off-days allowed to an officer, it said.

In single-doctor medical institutions, the superintendent of the CHC will make arrangements to provide days off following the same principle taking into account the presence of Ayush medical officers and pharmacists.

The doctors can neither merge alternate off-days with CL/EL, nor carry over the off days to the next month, except when the public holiday falls in the last week of a month, the notification said.