UP health dept to hire 900 more doctors on contract, pay more for serving in remote districts

The UP health department has received applications from 1500 doctors and interviews h ave begun. The appointment letters are expected to be issued in the first week of September.

The Uttar Pradesh health department has started the process to deploy 900 more doctors on contractual posts for a year to strengthen medical care in view of the possible third wave of Covid-19.

There are about 18,000 sanctioned posts of government doctors in Uttar Pradesh. (PICTURE FOR REPRESENTATION)

“We have received applications from 1500 doctors and interviews have begun to select the best ones from among them for our hospitals across the state,” said Dr Kalpana Singh, director general training who also holds charge of director general medical health.

The officials in the health department said they plan to finish interviews by September 1 and, thereafter, the appointment letters will be issued in the first week of September.

“Being contractual jobs, the selected doctors will be given the option to work in their home district if there are vacancies,” said a senior health official.

“Our focus as well as the vacancies are more in the district hospitals and community health centres in the periphery (remote) districts such as Chitrakoot, Deoria, Banda, Balrampur, Shamli and Hamirpur, where the number of doctors is less. So, doctors joining in these districts, will get more salary compared to metro cities,” said the official.

“Increasing the number of doctors in periphery districts will ensure patients do not have to rush to the state capital for treatment. This eventually will reduce the load on health facilities in King George’s Medical University in Lucknow or the Medical College in Prayagraj,” said Dr Abhishek Shukla, secretary general association of international doctors.

The state has less than 14,000 government doctors working on permanent posts in 157 hospitals, 855 community health centres and about 3000 primary health centres, apart from other smaller health facilities. The sanctioned posts of government doctors in Uttar Pradesh is over 18,000.

“We expected at least 500 applicants will be specialists, but we got 251 such applications. We hope a good number of them pass the screening and join service,” said Dr Singh.

A specialist joining in a “periphery district” will get ₹1.10 lakh as salary per month while the same specialist joins service in a metro city, he or she will get about ₹80,000 as salary. Similarly, if an MBBS doctor joins service in a periphery district, he or she will get ₹60,000 per month and if they join in bigger cities, the pay could be ₹40,000 per month.

According to officials, the posts being offered are contractual and hence those joining service will be allowed to work in their home district, which is not the case in permanent posts.

“The appointment will, however, be for districts in the periphery or those far off from metros and doctors joining services in such districts will get more pay,” said the official.