File picture of Doctors at SCB Medical College and Hospital

Bhubaneswar, June 23: The state government today increased the retirement age of government doctors working in hospitals at rural and district levels from 60 to 62 years.

Health minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak told the Assembly that the move would help the state in overcoming scarcity of doctors, especially in rural and backward areas.

By making this move, the state would retain around 400 government doctors, who were going to retire in the next two years.

“On an average, 200 government doctors retire in a year,” Nayak said.

On August 5 last year, the state government had raised the retirement age of doctors of government-run medical colleges (teaching staff) from 60 to 65 years to meet acute shortage of teaching staff.

There have been large-scale vacancies of doctors in rural areas, especially in the tribal-dominated undivided Koraput-Bolangir-Kalahandi districts.

Official sources said that the state had a sanctioned strength of 4,800 doctors for its primary health centres, district headquarters hospitals and other hospitals. Of these, about 1,500 posts are lying vacant.

The state government has also come under severe criticism as the Medical Council of India (MCI) has refused to increase the number of MBBS seats of two government medical colleges (MKCG in Berhampur and VSS in Burla) from 150 to 250 each and reduced the seats of SCB Medical College at Cuttack from 250 to 150. All the three colleges have shortage of teaching staff.

Official sources said the Union health ministry had earlier asked all states to raise the retirement age of government doctors to 65 years. Many states, such as Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have already increased the retirement age to 65 years.

As the doctors are not willing to serve backward areas, especially the KBK region, the government has implemented a package of incentives to attract the doctors to serve these areas. The state government has decided to make the first posting of government doctors in the KBK and other backward regions mandatory.