Struggling to find suitable candidates for senior-level positions at the six new AIIMS, the Union health ministry is mulling contracting retired doctors and faculty who have worked in the country's premier medical institutes.
The six new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) -- Rishikesh, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Raipur, Patna and Bhubaneshwar -- are yet to become fully functional due to the lack of doctors and faculty.
The ministry is considering hiring retired doctors on contract basis as various faculty positions at the level of additional professors and professors in most of the clinical disciplines lie vacant despite two rounds of vacancy filling exercises.
"All the six new AIIMS have been finding it extremely difficult to start out-patient and in-patient department services in a number of speciality and super-speciality disciplines due to faculty crunch," said a senior health ministry official.
"We advertised twice. Last year, we advertised 1,300 posts for the AIIMS at Jodhpur, Bhopal, Patna, Raipur, Bhubaneswar and Rishikesh. Only 300 were selected out of which 200 joined. Most of them were found to be unsuitable for the positions," the official said.
As an immediate measure, the ministry is thinking of contractual employment of faculty up to 70 years of age and hiring faculty and doctors who have served in reputed institutes like PGI-Chandigarh and AIIMS, New Delhi, the official said.
In order to attract such faculty, there is a proposal to give them gross monthly remuneration that is at par with the regular faculty of the same rank.
Additionally, they may also be suitably compensated for renting accommodation or even the institute may offer them a place to stay, the official said.
A high-powered committee, headed by M K Bhan, former secretary in the Department of Biotechnology, constituted to look at the governance structure of all the new AIIMS, had made these proposals to the ministry.
Over the last two years, the AIIMS at Jodhpur has been able to fill up 47 per cent of its vacancies, followed by Bhubaneshwar which filled up 45 per cent vacancies, Rishikesh had 43 per cent vacancies filled,
Bhopal had 35 per cent, and Raipur just 24 per cent. The AIIMS at Patna has been able to fill up only 17 per cent of its faculty positions.
