Regularise, else would go on strike from Nov 1, warn DSB medicos
   Date :15-Oct-2020

Dr Sameer Golawar_1 
 MSMTA office-bearers Dr Sameer Golawar and others submitting a memorandum to Assembly Speaker Nana Patole.
 
 
By Vikas Vaidya :
 
All DSB lecturers in GMCHs across Maharashtra to wear black ribbon on duty from today
 
 
Who are the ones rubbing shoulders with the resident doctors while providing treatment to coronavirus patients in Government Medical College and Hospitals across State? Who are the ones fighting to get their services regularised even after serving the humanity while on contract for last 17 years? They are the medicos who are selected by Divisional Selection Board (DSB) and are termed -- DSB lecturers. Such medicos are in the service on contract for a period between 120 and 324 days.
 
Apart from serving the humanity even in the time of pandemic, the medicos also have to conduct lectures. Ironically, services of such medicos are overlooked by the State government even if some of them are on contract for 324 days of a year. Maharashtra State Medical Teachers Association (MSMTA) is taking up the issue with the authorities concerned since long. It has submitted memorandums on many occasions but its demand for regularisation of service of such medicos remains ignored. Now, the DSB lecturers have decided to take an aggressive stand. They have threatened the government to launch intense agitation from November 1, if their long-pending demand remained unfulfilled.
 
To begin with, all of them while on duty would wear black ribbon for two days starting from Thursday. Despite vacancy of 583 doctors, GMCHs in Maharashtra are fighting the war against COVID-19. To share the burden of frontline warriors, DSB medicos are joining in. Many of them have tested positive for coronavirus while attending COVID-19 patients in the special wards. As their services are constantly overlooked, most of them shared their plights with ‘The Hitavada’.
 
One of MSMTA members informed that the government had regularised services of 192 such medicos in the year 2016. Later, the process came to a standstill for the reasons best known to the authorities concerned. During his tenure as Medical Education Secretary Dr Sanjay Mukherjee and Director Dr T P Lahane tried their best to pursue the issue. In GMCHs across Maharashtra, around 400 DSB lecturers are awaiting their service get regularised.