Somebody brought up the issue of on-call allowance. We will try to broach this subject slowly as it is quite a long story and a story with no apparent end in sight. We want to write a long post on this by decided that it might be better to do it in parts and we can discuss this as we go along.
As civil servants, we are expected to work during normal office hours.But as doctors, we do also work outside of these working hours as patients do not just get unwell during office hours. We do on-calls. We stay overnight in hospitals. We work weekends. We work at night. We work in shifts. We do all this to serve the public. Unfortunately we do not get paid to work outside these hours. This is why when the general order is mentioned, rather than concentrate on our clothes, tardiness, we tend to say why are we not paid for the extra hours? It should work both ways.
Does this sound surprising to anybody that we are not being paid for extra hours? Is it fair for us to ask for on-call allowance? We will leave it at that and continue at a later time.
