news details |
|
|
| These silent protestors went unnoticed | | |
Srinagar,Jul 4
(KIP): While protests over employment issues are fast becoming the order of the day in Kashmir and some of them even find space in the prime time of news channels by climbing on top of the mobile towers, the ones with genuine causes seldom see the light of the media.
The strike of Bachelors of Dental Surgery (BDS) going on inside the Dental College campus in Srinagar is one such example. As these fresh pass-outs adopted the most democratic and peaceful means of protest by sitting on a dharna inside the campus, the cane charging by police on these peaceful protesters and the manhandling by college staff was hardly reported. Probably, the doctors' failure to take the protest to the Central Lal Chowk area, or the fact that they did not occupy a space near to the press colony was the reason.
And that is not all. "Even erecting a tent in which we could sit for the Dharna was prevented by police. The tent man was harassed and he ran away," said the president of the BDS doctors association, Dr. Adil, limping since the Cane charging cops left him injured.
The demands of these Dental Surgeons are neither very broad scale nor in contradiction to the established norms. "All we want is a house job, which the college has been giving to all its students at the associated hospital ever since it began functioning," says the association president adding that it is only this year that the norms have been changed.
Like every year, 10 vacancies of house surgeons were created in November last year and the college kept the vacancies open till February when 13 more posts were left vacant by the outgoing surgeons. The posts were immediately advertised by the in charge Principal of the Dental College while ignoring the fact that the new batch would be ready within a month for occupying these vacancies.
"This untimely advertisement was to accommodate some blue-eyed boys who had done their degrees from donation colleges across the country," said the president of Dental Surgeons Association. "The Principal claims that his decision is based on an order by the Health and Medical Education Department that outsiders may also be allowed to do the house job. But the fact is that no other college in Kashmir has implemented the decision claiming that their internal students shall suffer. And the timing of the advertisement favoured the outsiders while relegating us ineligible. When we protested, we were cane charged by police and the people from college administration joined them while police watched as spectators," he adds.
The height of the matter is that police denied the students a right to file an FIR against the college administration for misreporting things to the police and the manhandling by employees in college administration. "The Principal called police saying that he locked inside his room by the students while the fact is that he was at the same time attending a board meeting. Police ruthlessly beat us and many of us were injurted," adds Dr. Imtiyaz Alam, another protester. "The latest move to pressurize us for giving up our demands came today when police prevented us to lay a tent where we could sit for protest. But the principal must be ignorant to think that we are going to give up our demands. Come sun, come rain, we are here till the higher authorities do lost adhere to our demands," he added.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
