PESHAWAR, Feb 20: The NWFP Contract Doctors Association has vowed to continue its struggle and hunger strike till Sunday. As the hunger strike started by the contract doctors entered its second day on Friday , president of the association, Dr Syed Taimur Shah, said that the morale of his colleagues was high and their struggle will continue till its logical end to get their problems resolved.

Talking to Dawn at the hunger strike camp opposite the Peshawar Press Club, he lamented that not a single government official had visited the camp to meet the protesting doctors.

Dr Shah said that all the contract doctors had launched strike throughout the province, which would be continued. The responsibility for an mishap would rest with the government, which had turned blind eye to the genuine demands of more than 700 contract doctors.

He said that the interviews had been started by the PSC, which had caused unrest among them. Most of the contract doctors, had passed the tests on more than one occasion and subjecting them to tests and interviews was sheer injustice with them.

He said that the contract doctors, who had been serving for the last seven or eight years at different health facilities, were unable to compete with the fresh medical graduates and therefore the government should extend their contracts on the basis of their clinical experience, not tests.

The contract doctors, he said were appointed in 1995 and every government had been promising them to regularise their jobs, but all these promises are yet to get materialised. He said that on Feb 23, the contract doctors will hold a long march to Islamabad to apprise the president and the prime minister of their problems.