LAHORE, June 20: A large number of doctors on Monday staged a protest demonstration against the government’s cold response towards a solution to their longstanding demands. The doctors, protesting under the banner of the Pakistan Medical Association action committee, were holding placards and banners inscribed with their demands.

They demanded that doctors should be appointed on a regular basis, and those already serving on contract should be regularized. They said the paramedics, including nurses, should also be appointed on a regular basis, and senior medical officers having postgraduate qualification be posted against the vacant posts of senior registrars in teaching hospitals and specialists’ posts in districts.

They also called for reduction in the fees being charged by the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan and abolition of the Punjab Rural Support Programme.

Later, the action committee chaired by Dr Tanvir Anwar held a meeting at the PMA House, which was attended by its executive committees of different districts. The meeting decided to expand the protest campaign all over the province.

Committee member Prof Yasmin Rashid informed the meeting about the professional and economic situation of doctors. She said the PMA had presented doctors’ longstanding demands to the government. It would now continue to protest till the acceptance of demands, she said.

For the province-wide protest campaign, she said a PMA’s executive committee meeting had been called on June 27.