Freshers miss out on civil assistant surgeon posts as contract doctors get weightage

TJUDA says freshers should be given preference since contract doctors have already been given employment chance; HRDA president calls for abolishing contract hiring system

Doctors who were hired a few years ago on contract basis are being given extra weightage in recruitment to the post of civil assistant surgeon in Telangana, leaving freshers in the lurch. The weightage depends on the work experience of doctors who have served in tribal areas, villages and urban areas, in that order.

Adviser to Telangana Junior Doctors Association, Srinivas Gundagani said the contract system was introduced around 2017. “The district medical officer issuing the notification for contract hiring and the whole procedure is done without proper guidelines,” he added.

“Apart from this, the persons who have been on contract since the last four to five years will have more advantage as their percentage of weightage increases yearly. An MBBS student, after completing their internship, becomes eligible for the post of civil assistant surgeon, but will be losing out despite merit,” he pointed out, adding that preference should be given to freshers only since contract doctors have already been given a chance.

“The government had earlier announced that they will not be giving weightage to contract doctors but that has not been implemented yet,” Dr.Gundagani said.

In September this year, the State government had released the notification for filling up vacant civil assistant surgeon posts. After that, it released two provisional merit lists and asked the candidates to submit their documents for verification. The last date for verification was November 25 and the final results should be released soon.

The root cause of the problem is that the government is not conducting calendar year recruitments. The contract system should be abolished, Healthcare Reforms Doctors Association president Mahesh said.

“The purpose of Telangana Medical and Health Services Recruitment Board is to conduct regular recruitments and avoid contract hiring. Their job is to identify the vacancies in the respective departments and issue continuous notifications to fill up the posts. It can be done once or twice a year. The system should be implemented from the next year so that the quality of healthcare in the State is not compromised,” he asserted.