The order covers doctors, nursing officers, pharmacy officers, paramedics, technicians, and Class-III and Class-IV employees, including contractual staff, working in government hospitals, medical colleges, and autonomous health institutions receiving state grants, an order by the state government’s home department (special) said.

The order makes any cessation of work or strike action by medical staff in government healthcare facilities illegal for the next six months, potentially setting up a confrontation between the protesting doctors and the state administration.

The prohibition extends to all public health establishments, including district headquarters hospitals, sub-divisional hospitals, area hospitals, community health centres, primary health centres, municipal hospitals, medical colleges, the Ahalya Bai Regional Cancer Centre (AHRCC), Regional Spinal Injury Centre, jail hospitals, and police hospitals.

The decision came in the wake of government doctors in the peripheral cadre, under the banner of the Odisha Medical Service Association intensifying their protest since December 26, disrupting outpatient department services for two hours.

The doctors’ association has been demanding remuneration parity with central government pay scales, abolition of Level-15 as followed for other Class-I officers in Odisha without any preconditions, proportionate cadre restructuring across all grades and incremental incentives for super specialists, specialists, postmortem allowances, equal performance-based incentives for Odisha Medical and Health Services (OMHS) and Odisha Medical Education Services (OMES) cadres, and implementation of an exit policy for doctors who have served over three years in the Kalahandi-Balangir-Koraput region, KBK Plus areas, and tribal sub-plan zones.