File moving between Finance, Health Deptts for last 2 yrs
*Rural population suffering, aspirants aghast
Govind Sharma
JAMMU, June 20: Notwithstanding steep rise in population of J&K in last 12 years and coming up of various new Government hospitals across J&K, Government has failed to advertise even a single post of Dental Surgeon in the UT since 2008, thus depriving a large chunk of population, particularly of rural areas, of oral health facilities and leaving thousands of trained dentists unemployed.
Sources told Excelsior that the posts of dental surgeons in Health Department were advertised last in 2008 and since then thousands of dental surgeons are hopeless and jobless. They said that around 5000 dental surgeons are registered in J&K UT and out of these about 3200 are unemployed and every year more than 300 new Graduates (about 200 from J&K and 100 from outside) are piling this heap of unemployment.
They said while there are about 15000 posts for medical doctors, the number of posts for dentists is only somewhere around 550. “There is a large population, particularly in rural areas, who does not have proper access to dental healthcare services even after so many health schemes being implemented in the UT,” they lamented.
Sources said that there is dire need of dentists in the Primary Health Centers across the UT as every third person is suffering from dental ailments now-a-days, but Government is not alive to the situation and ignoring this important aspect of healthcare.
“The inflexibility and insensitivity by Government towards the dental profession would only exaggerate unemployment among these highly skilled, educated and professionally trained dental surgeons, and promote brain drain,” they added.
Sources informed that after a 3-month-long hunger strike in 2014, these jobless dental surgeons had handed over a petition to the J&K Government but nothing was done to absorb them. “Two years back, the issue was put up before the then Governor Satya Pal Malik and Advisor Vijay Kumar, who directed the Finance Department to find out ways to absorb the unemployed BDS after which a proposal for creation of posts of dental surgeons was made by the Health Department,” sources added.
However, they regretted that the file of the same bearing number HD/Plan/68-2018 is moving between Health and Finance Departments since last two years without any progress despite assurances from concerned authorities. They said that the matter is presently pending with Finance Department and undue delay in clearance of the file is diminishing the hope of qualified professional youth who are at the verge of overage, stress and starvation.
When contacted, Financial Commissioner, Atal Dulloo said that the proposal for creation of 587 posts of dental surgeons stands submitted to the Finance Department for approval since 2018 but the proposal is yet to be approved by the Finance Department with reasons best known to them.
He said as soon as the proposal is approved by the Finance Department, further process will be initiated to advertise and fill the posts on fast track basis.
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