The service postgraduate (Service PG) students of Madurai Medical College in Indian State of Tamil Nadu continued their indefinite strike on Friday against violation of the government's recruitment policy for doctors in public sector hospitals.

They blamed the government for using the recent dengue outbreak as a pretext to recruit doctors through a walk-in interview in November and in violation of norms, including non-adherence to government’s reservation policies.

According to the Service PG students, who joined the postgraduate courses through the ‘service’ quota after serving for a few years in Primary Health Centres (PHCs), the counselling for the recruitment to government hospitals and medical colleges was generally done in June every year.

“First, a transfer counselling will be conducted. Once that is settled and the vacancies are clearly known, the counselling for new recruitment will be conducted, in which the Service PGs will be given the priority,” said a student.

He said that the Service PGs were given priority since they execute a bond to work in government hospitals throughout their career and pay a penalty if they break the bond.

Another student pointed out that usually the vacancies would be less in number every year and all of them will be filled by the Service PGs who pass out of colleges in the respective year.

Pointing out that the announced vacancies were small in number this year during the counselling in June, he said that they were surprised when the government notified more than 700 vacancies in September for filling through the walk-in interview.

Though the dengue outbreak was ostensibly cited as the reason, the students claimed that the recruitment included posts in specialities such as orthopaedic surgery, general surgery, ENT and anatomy that had nothing to do with treating dengue.

They also pointed out that a considerable number of new recruits were postgraduates from private universities and those from institutions outside Tamil Nadu.

The key demand of the students was carrying out recruitment as per the Government Order 131. (The Hindu)