Medical college docs refuse to bite Saifai bait

THE GOVERNMENT proposes, doctors dispose. And this has almost put Mulayam Singh Yadav's dream project, the UP Rural Medical Sciences and Research Institute (RMSRI) in Saifai on the ventilator.

At a time when the State Government is planning to make rural posting compulsory for government doctors, the Chief Minister's Saifai project has failed to rope in teachers from the six state medical colleges in UP.

Not keen to serve at Saifai, the CM's native village, doctors who were shortlisted for the job have so far resisted all efforts by the government to get them posted at RMSRI on deputation.

The Medical Education Department had selected around a dozen doctors from all the six state medical colleges, but the doctors went to court and got a stay. Later, doctors from medical colleges in Kanpur and Allahabad were directed to go to Saifai. The government even offered them pay-scale equivalent to that of SGPGI doctors but they refused to bite the bait.

The Medical Education Department has planned to start admission in the undergraduate course (MBBS) at RMSRI from the coming academic session, which begins in June. The Medical Council of India (MCI) is expected inspect RMSRI in the last week of May and it hangs like a Damocles sword on the authorities.

“MCI has laid down strict rules for recognition and we have to fill up all the posts of lecturer, reader and professor before the start of admission”, said an officer.
“Left with little time, we had no other option but to get doctors on deputation from State medical colleges,” he said.

But the doctors are adamant about not going to Saifai. “Once deputed at Saifai it will become difficult to return to the parent medical college,” the doctors feared. “After all, Saifai is still a village and we will neither get job satisfaction, nor facilities we enjoy in the cities,” they said.

But Health Department officials alleged that most doctors working in government medical colleges have booming private practice and that's stopping them from joining the CM's project.

After all their tricks to woo teachers from state medical colleges failed, the government was in a dilemma. They were desperate to get doctors as “a setback to RMSRI will mean a blow to the CM's prestige,” an official said.  

Solution came in the way of a 'walk-in-interview' and age relaxation for the candidates. It clicked. Retired teachers applied for various posts. “We even got doctors from neighbouring states. All have been offered SGPGI pay-scale. However, despite the best efforts some posts continue to remain vacant,” an official said.