Succumbing to the reluctance of fresh medical graduates to serve their mandatory terms in rural areas, the Gujarat Government is toying with the idea of reducing their tenure in the villages.
Even as the state government projects itself as a preferred medical tourism hub due to the high-end speciality hospitals in the big cities, much of its rural areas lack proper health infrastructure as the young doctors refuse to serve their mandatory terms in the villages.
The government now proposes to reduce the medicos’ tenure in rural areas to only one-and-half years from the earlier two years, Health Minister Rushikesh Patel informed the State Assembly on Monday.
But the reduction in their rural tenure would come with an increase in the bond amount to Rs 20 lakhs which the medical student will have to pay for avoiding rural service.
The medical students and the Gujarat Government had often been at loggerheads over this contentious issue of rural service which they want to skip under the pretext of having enrolled or preparing for higher education.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, over 2,000 resident doctors had locked horns with the State Government to demand exemption from rural service in lieu of the duties they did in the Covid wards.
As medicos had the option to pay up the bond money to escape rural service, the Government had refused to accept the few lakhs of rupees in view of shortage of doctors during the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the state government had recovered over Rs 139 crore as bond money from medical graduates who refused to undertake rural service.