An association of medics in Delhi on Friday extended support to resident doctors of two municipal hospitals and threatened to resort to mass resignation if their three months' pending salary wasn't released within a week.
The Municipal Corporation Doctors' Association (MCDA) also wrote to Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, seeking his intervention on the issue.
A copy of the letter has also been marked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The resident doctors at the North Delhi Municipal Corporation's 450-bedded Kasturba Hospital and Hindu Rao Hospital have claimed that they have not been paid salary since March.
Many doctors and other staff have tested positive for COVID-19 till date at both hospitals.
MCDA president R R Gautam said on Friday that doctors are putting their lives and family in danger every day.
"Being the frontline COVID healthcare workers, they should be paid their due salaries."
'Our association fully and unconditionally support the reasonable demands of the resident doctors' associations, and have further decided that if the salaries of the three months of all doctors are not paid in a week, then we may also be forced to resign en masse from our government services,' the association said in the letter.
If not that, 'then we may be granted permission to take VRS on a mass level', it added.
On Wednesday, the resident doctors of the colonial-era Kasturba Hospital threatened to resign en masse.
On Thursday, the Delhi high court initiated a public interest litigation on the issue.
Jai Prakash, chairman of the standing committee of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, which runs both hospitals said, "The matter is being resolved".
"Representatives of the RDAs of the two hospitals met me on Thursday. We have assured them that we will try to pay their due salaries, if not at once, for one month right now, and then slowly for subsequent months," he said.
"We have explained to them that the MCD is not getting revenues in this coronavirus situation, so they must consider our constraint too," Prakash said.
