About 2,000 doctors of the Tamil Nadu Government Doctors' Association (TNGDA) will sit on a day-long hunger strike on April 4 on the premises of Madras Medical College (MMC) seeking the attention of the State Chief Minister to meet their demands.

The TNGDA demands the constitution of a special committee to study the widespread disparities in their pay scale, promotion and allowance for clinical and non-clinical faculties of government health sector in the State and withdrawal of ban on voluntary retirement scheme.

State secretary of the Association Dr Senthil told Pharmabiz that there were anomalies in the pay scale for government doctors in the Primary Health Centres, Taluk Hospitals, District Hospitals, Medical Colleges and other hospitals in the state. "We have decided to conduct the hunger strike because the Chief Minister has turned down all our initiatives to represent our grievances", he said.

By explaining the mode of agitation, Dr S Kanagasabhapathy, state president of TNGDA, said, that about 2,000 government doctors will take part in the fast seeking the intervention of state Chief Minister.

Earlier the association members had sent telegrams to the Chief Minister demanding that their pay structure be revised on par with the pay scale of the doctors of the Central government or at least on par with the other States.

They complained that the professors in the medical colleges are also being paid less when compared with the professors of Arts and Engineering colleges in the State. Recently the TNGDA had requested the state government to constitute a special committee to set right the anomalies in wages of government doctors.

Dr Senthil said that while the entry level salary of the government doctors in Tamil Nadu is Rs 8,000, Karnataka has fixed the salary for entry-level doctors at Rs 14,000. In Andhra, entry-level salary is Rs 11,715. Even the Task Force report of the National Rural Health Mission insists that the pay scale of doctors should be on par with Class 1 officers in the state.