The management of the KJP Hospital Shillong bereft of the services of its doctors, has booked the services of three specialists from the famed Christian Medical College & Hospital, Vellore.
A senior member of the Synod, who was recently at Vellore for the purpose, told this reporter that the arrangements was finalized with the CMC to depute three specialists – a pediatrician, a gynecologist and a surgeon – initially for a period of one month. The arrangement is expected to be extended but not necessarily with the same set of doctors.
The KJP Hospital (formerly Roberts Hospital) has been passing through a period of serious internal turmoil for the past few months. First, the Grade-IV staff went on a strike demanding Govt pay-scale. This ensued dissension, intrigues and shadow boxing. Following a protracted tug of war between the management of the hospital and its Medical Superintendent, Dr E Syngkon, the entire team of doctors resigned from the service. This left the management in a quandary.
Stung by the unprecedent crisis, the Synod decided to go all out for refurbishing its lost image. The resultant effect is the enlisting of services of three specialists from Vellore, besides engaging some locally available doctors.
A spokesman of Synod recapitulating the developments culminating in the resignation of the doctors, said that the doctors were pressing the Synod for accepting some of their “most unjustified” demands. Their demands include : 1) scrapping the rules and regulations governing the services of the staff as formulated by the management: 2) recognition of the doctors who had put in 15 years of service, as “specialists”, and 3) allowing private practice by the doctors.
“How can we go back to the colonial days when no service rules existed? No institution can run smoothly without following certain rules and regulations. What the doctors wanted was tantamount to authoritarian rule by the Medical Superintendent”, the spokesman said.