KARACHI: The doctors recruited by the Sindh government during the coronavirus pandemic have not been given salaries for the four-month period after the last extension of their service, nor their jobs are regularised despite a court order to this effect.
The government had hired a total 1,500 doctors, under the Sindh Epidemic Diseases Act 2014, during the Covid emergency in May 2020 on contract basis for 89 days. Their contracts were extended every three months, without regularising their job.
Getting frustrated over non-regularisation of their job, around 50 percent of them resigned, while 808 doctors are still working on contract that was last extended, for 11th time, from January to March 2023, after which neither they were given extension, nor paid salaries since January, leaving them to fend for themselves and their families amid skyrocketing inflation.
One of the affected doctors says that delay in the payment of their salaries was already a norm, but this time they have been totally deprived of their pay for the last four months, making it hard for them to make both ends meet.
Lamenting the government’s apathy, he says, “Now some of us don’t even have money to reach the office.”
He further says that despite having worked for some three years now, their service was not being regularised, depriving them of their right to permanent jobs.
He adds that the affected doctors had approached the court over the issue and got a direction for the government to make their job permanent, but the court order was not being implemented so far.