Striking doctors turn down “closed -door”meeting with Mamata at Nabanna, ask her to come to hospital first

Kolkata,June.15(HS) : The marathon General Body(GB) meeting of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Association here today tuned down the Chief minister’s invitation to the Association delegation to meet her at the state Secretariat at Nabanna this evening, and instead demanded that she must come to the Nil Ratan Sarkar Medical College and Hospital and speak with the striking doctors to resolve nearly week long crisis  in an open forum. 

“We shall not go to Nabanna to be with her and instead want her to personally come among all of us here at the NRS hospital to resolve the issue through talks in an open forum”, said General Secretary of the state Junior Doctors Association Dr Ashis Mukherjee who also made it clear that they did not want to resolve their demand and negotiate with the Chief minister behind the closed door and felt that it should be done openly and in front of striking doctors at the hospital premises.

Before starting their all important GB meeting the striking students held an hour long meeting with President of the Indian Medical Association(IMA), Shantanu Sen at NRS Hospital for an amicable solution to resolve the issue. But as Dr Sen who is also a Rajya Sabha MP of Trinamool Congress, followed the line of Chief minister Mamata Banerjee and urged the doctors to first withdraw their strike for the sake of thousands of hapless patients before meeting the demand for comprehensive security arrangement in every government hospital, the striking doctors refused to budge and reiterated their demand for security first along with the apology from the Chief minister for her alleged derogatory comment on junior doctors before considering the withdrawal of their seize work.        

Moreover, it is also not yet known whether the Chief minister who has, however, decided to visit the injured Junior doctor Pribesh Mukherjee at the Institute of Neuro Sciences here later today, has also agreed to come and meet the striking students at  the nearby NRS  hospital to end the almost week long seize work which has crumbled the entire Medical services in the state and elsewhere in the country in solidarity.

Meanwhile,in a major shift from its earlier stand to remain quite and watch the medical services have been deteriorating day by day from outside, the state government today announced that they had prepared a ten points work schedule to ensure the fool proof security of both doctors and non medical staff in every government and other hospital in the state by not only severely restricting the entry of outsiders including the patients relatives, but also deploying  armed security personnel at every entry and exit point to prevent any untoward incident.

Strict restriction would also be imposed to stop the patient parties movement inside the ward and in hospital premises freely,among others. 

But when the attention of the striking doctors was drawn towards the government’s ten point programme to meet their  main demand, spokesmen for the Junior  Doctors Association said the formal announcement for such measures must come from the Chief minister herself and that too in front of all of us at the Hospital premises. ‘Otherwise our agitation would continue indefinitely’, he said . 

Now, it remains to be seen  what is in store for the general public who have been waiting with all eagerness to know when the entire medical services in the state would be normalized to end the harrowing experiences of thousands of patients across the state since Monday last (10 June).