Vijayawada: Minister of medical and health Satya Kumar Yadav said nine government doctors have been promoted as District Coordinators of Health Services (DCHS) against six existing and two more vacancies that are to arise soon. He further said that these promotions were approved on Friday.
The minister explained that the DCHSs oversee the functioning of community health centres, district and area hospitals at the district level. He added that there are 224 hospitals in the secondary healthcare sector in these three categories. He mentioned that the doctors with three years of service in the rank of Civil Surgeon Specialist (CSS) and two years of service left before retirement are eligible for promotion as DCHS.
The posts of DCHS for districts of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, East Godavari, Krishna, Guntur and Prakasam are vacant and vacancies for Nellore and Chittoor districts will soon be available.
While examining the proposal for promotion, Satya Kumar Yadav has noticed that 50 of the 85 eligible candidates for promotion have refused to be promoted as DCHS. He recorded serious concern over 59 per cent of eligible doctors unwilling to be promoted. This high degree of refusal to be promoted as DCHS came in the backdrop of 33 per cent of eligible doctors refusing to be promoted as Professors in the exercise recently undertaken.
The health minister has ordered for an in-depth review of the reasons for such rejection of promotions by government doctors working in secondary and tertiary healthcare institutions and possible remedial measures.
According to senior officials of the medical and health department, many government doctors are keen to work only at places of their wish and the provision of doctors rejecting promotion any number of times is leading to the situation of not willing to be promoted. As a result, doctors who are eligible for promotion are rejected the same till they get a posting at the place of their choice.
