Punjab starts firing rehired professors, 15 faculties of GMC Amritsar relieved

Amritsar: Taking note of the huge monthly salary bill and aiming to provide more opportunities to the younger faculties, the Punjab Government recently changed its policy and decided to relieve around 30 out of 42 rehired professors belonging to Government medical colleges in Patiala and Amritsar, putting a stop to the exemption given by the former Congress led Government.

Although as of now 15 out of 21 such rehired faculties have been fired by the authorities, The Tribune adds that once the Government is done with the ongoing faculty recruitment drive, the retained faculties would also be asked to leave.

In fact, the Government retained some of the re-employed faculties in order to comply with the minimum faculty rules laid down by the National Medical Commission (NMC).

Despite the former Chief Minister Charanjit Singh's decision of "no extension" to any government employee, the former Congress Government had given an exemption to the medical college professors. Therefore, even though the Government policy states that the retirement age for medical professors is 62 years, the Medical Education Department of Punjab had been rehiring professors up to the age of 70 years.

However, many of the regular employees were against this police of rehiring retired faculties as they considered it as an impediment for their chances of promotion.

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As per the latest media report by The Tribune, the Medical Education Department also took note of the fact that paying salary to the rehired professors was resulting in a monthly burden of more than Rs 2 crore to the State Government as each of the rehired faculties were receiving a salary around Rs 2-3 lakh per month. Apart from this, sources revealed to the daily that taking into consideration the seniority of these faculties, most of such doctors were not even performing Covid duties as well.

At such an outset, the Government decided to relieve 30 out of 42 rehired employees of Government medical colleges and in case of GMC Amritsar 15 out of 21 such faculties have been fired.

Informing that rest of the retained professors will be relieved too, the Principal Secretary of Medical Education Department of the State, Hussan Lal told the daily, "The objective of this development is to improve the functioning of both medical colleges. We are hopeful that we will not require any re-employed faculty after we complete the ongoing recruitment process."

Although the Government blamed the huge salary bill as one of the prime reasons for this decision, one of the senior faculty member informed The Tribune that it was being false claimed that the reemployed faculties were being paid up to Rs 3 lakh per month. He said, "Retired teachers were reemployed as per norms and were paid around Rs 67,000 to Rs 68,000 per month." He also refuted the allegations claiming that the rehired faculties were not performing COVID duties.

As per the doctors, such faculties get rehired against a vacant post. In case the said post gets filled, the services of the reemployed faculties end automatically. Speaking about the issue, another faculty member told the daily, "There is also no truth in reemployed faculty members blocking promotion channels of junior faculty members."

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