Patna, May 31: The Vijay Prakash committee has recommended payment of non-practice allowance to government hospital doctors. The panel submitted its report to the finance department last week. The allowance would be 25 per cent of each doctor’s basic pay and should not exceed Rs 85,000,the report said.

Bihar Health Services Association has welcomed the move and called a meeting of its executive committee on June 8 to discuss the issue threadbare. The committee, set up in July 2013, to ascertain the utility and practicality of the allowance, has recommended a ban on private practice by government doctors in the state.

In 1998, the state had declared all posts of government doctors as non-practising, implying that they could do practise privately. So it was decided to give the doctors the non-practising allowance. It was, however, given for one only one financial year, April 2000 to March 2001, and stopped thereafter. The government cited that doctors practising privately and taking the allowance simultaneously as the reason behind the decision. Twelve years on, the Vijay Prakash committee was set up with the principal secretaries of the health and animal and fish resources departments to ascertain whether allowance should be given to government doctors or not.

The committee, in its report submitted last week, recommended the government to implement a complete ban on the private practice of government doctors in all medical colleges of the state. The ban would also cover doctors working in superspeciality hospitals. However, the ban exempts doctors working in rural areas.

The committee found that because of private practice by medical teachers and doctors of government medical college and hospitals practising privately, teaching and research were getting affected.