Patients suffered immensely as doctors at public hospitals across the country observed a two-hour work stoppage yesterday protesting “discrepancies” in the eighth national pay scale.

Even after waiting in queues for long, many patients and their attendants had to return home failing to see the doctors who abstained from work from 12:00noon to 2:00pm.

Rustam Ali and his six-year-old daughter Sumaiya were two victims.

The man along with the girl, who fractured her left hand while playing, went to Dhaka Medical College Hospital around 10:00am.

“I bought a ticket and we stood in a queue for some two hours. But all of a sudden, doctors said they would go for the work stoppage,” he told The Daily Star.

After waiting at the hospital's outdoor for around four and a half hours, they went back to their home in Bikrampur.

Usually, the outdoor opens at 8:00am and closes at 2:30pm.

Moniruzzaman and his son Mohammad Milon, 15, student at a college in Shariatpur, faced a similar ordeal yesterday. Milon had fractured his spine in a recent accident.

”We waited in the line for four hours until 10:00am. Then the doctor came, prescribed my son an X-ray and asked us to come again later,” said Moniruzzaman.

He alleged that the physician did not see his son properly.

Many outraged patients at the outdoor were seen shouting at the doctors.

Dhaka Medical College Teachers Association General Secretary Debesh Chandra Talukder said they observed the same programme on Monday and Tuesday protesting “discrepancies” in the eighth pay scale.

He said as per the pay scale, bureaucrats can be promoted to grade I whereas doctors only up to the grade III.

He said they would continue the work stoppage today. They are likely to declare their new course of action after meeting other doctor leaders.

Asked about patients' sufferings, Debesh said, “It is not that we did not see the patients at all. We stopped our work only for two hours.”

Hospital sources said the doctors at the emergency unit and some general wards are not observing the work stoppage on “humanitarian grounds”.

Uttam Kumar Barua, director at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital in the capital, said the two-hour work abstention was part of their movement against “discrimination” in terms of grades between bureaucrats and doctors.

This correspondent also talked to the authorities of the Mitford Hospital, National Institute of Traumatology, Orthopedic and Rehabilitation (Nitor), and other hospitals across the country. They said some of the doctors there took part in the programme yesterday.