Will you decide which govt officer to be posted or not? Mamata rejects junior docs' demand to sack health secy

Banerjee on Saturday dialed the junior doctors appealing them to call off hunger strike over the incident where a 31-year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered at Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in August.

West Bengal government's chief secretary Manoj Pant, home secretary Nandini Chakraborty and Kolkata Police DC Central Indira Mukherjee reached the site, where a section of junior doctors are "fasting unto death", on behalf of the administration.

When a medic who is on hunger strike read out the demand to sack NS Nigam, Banerjee outrightly rejected it and counter-charged a section of junior doctors of being involved in corruption.

"I can't accept this demand. The government will not function as per random demands. We will definitely probe upon receiving specific complaints of corruption," the Chief Minister, who accused a section of junior doctors of practicing at private hospitals during the strike, told a medic who is a part of 'fast unto death' movement.

The medic countered Banerjee saying, "We think the demand is justified as the heinous crime occurred during his tenure."

The Chief Minister hit back saying, "How can you demand sacking of all members of a department all together? Will you decide which government officer will be posted or not?... Let the investigation be over."

The medic responded, "I won't want to get into an argument with you on this."

Barring the sacking of the health secretary, Banerjee has, however, agreed to most of the demands but sought time for the implementation.

"I agree to your demands for elections at medical colleges but I need four months for implementation as byelections and several festivals are due to take place within that time," she said.

The protesters have requested a meeting with the Chief Minister.

The government has called a meeting with the junior doctors on Monday. "We have organised a meeting at 5 pm on Monday," said the chief secretary.

The protesting junior doctors, backed by senior medics, on Friday gave a deadline to the Mamata Banerjee government upto Monday to accept and implement all their 10 demands in the wake of the RG Kar horror, failure of which will lead to a complete strike by the medical community from both the public and private sectors.

The doctors are on hunger strike for 15 days now demanding justice for the RG Kar rape and murder victim besides raising 10 other demands which they say should be fulfilled for the sake of a clean and corruption-free healthcare system.

"We feel that all our 10 demands are justified and it would take 10 minutes for the chief minister to implement them. However, even after 13 days of hunger strikes by our fellow medics, there has been no response from the Chief Minister.

"We are disheartened that the CM has not even given any reaction even though our medics are falling sick and are admitted to the hospital," Debasish Halder, one of the protesting doctors, told the media at the site of the hunger strike.

"Our demands have been raised to prevent another Abhaya case. Our demands have been raised to ensure the entire health system is not collapsed. Therefore, the entire doctor community, including the senior doctors from both the government and private sector, have been forced to decide that we will go on complete strike from Tuesday if our demands are not met by Monday," Debasish Halder said.

He reiterated that the doctors don't want to go into a complete strike and urged the government to initiate talks to implement their demands soon.

He also said that if any untoward incident happened as a result of their strike, the Mamata Banerjee government would be responsible for the same.

Amidst their 'fast unto death' protest, the junior doctors last week met the West Bengal government's Chief Secretary Manoj Pant with their demands including the resignation of Health Secretary NS Nigam, elimination of threat culture, installation of CCTV cameras in hospitals, providing of safety and security.

After the meeting, the junior doctors had said, "We got nothing concrete from the meeting. We have been asked to wait for the puja to be over. The government will think over the demands in the third week of October when the festival will be over."

The protests escalated largely later after several senior doctors at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital submitted a symbolic mass resignation in solidarity with their juniors.

The junior doctors launched their hunger strike after the state government failed to meet their 24-hour deadline for addressing their demands earlier this month.