LAHORE, March 29: Over three dozen protesting doctors were released an hour after they were arrested while trying to break through police cordons and enter the Punjab Assembly building to register their agitation for a revised pay package. Witnesses said some three hundred doctors belonging to the Punjab chapter of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) took out separate rallies on Tuesday morning from major teaching hospitals of the provincial capital, including Lahore General Hospital, Children’s, Jinnah, Sir Ganga Ram, Services and Mayo hospitals, and converged on Charing Cross on The Mall at around 10am.

Holding placards inscribed with slogans in favour of their demands, the demonstrators, including women, staged a sit-in outside the Punjab Assembly chambers and raised slogans against Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Health Secretary Fawad Hasan Fawad for not addressing their grievances, including a revised pay package. The doctors blocked the road for four hours, causing a great deal of inconvenience to motorists and commuters while the assembly session was in progress.

The police deployed there arrested a few doctors at 1:00pm when they made an attempt to enter the legislature after breaking through the security cordon. Resultantly, skirmishes between the protesters and the police also took place.

The doctors, however, continued their agitation for another two hours and the police arrested some two dozen more activists of the YDA when they made another attempt to enter the assembly house at around 4pm.

The YDA officials claimed that the police took into custody over 100 doctors while the police denied such a large number of arrests, and said that several doctors reached police stations to court arrest.

The hours-long agitation threw traffic out of gear not only on The Mall but all adjoining roads and arteries and caused huge inconvenience especially to schoolchildren, officials and businessmen.