Bengal doctors threaten to go on complete strike on Oct 22 if Mamata govt fails to meet demands by then

The doctors are on hunger strike for 13 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.

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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 on the third week of October when the festival will be over."

The protests escalated largely later after about 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.