About 20 residents and junior lecturers from the only two private medical colleges offering post-graduate courses in the state -- Pravara Medical College in Ahmednagar district and Krishna Medical College in Karad -- will be dispatched to help man Mumbai's public hospitals, according to T C Benjamin, secretary, Department of Medical Education and Drugs.

Two private hospitals in the city have also offered the services of their superspecialists free of cost. The offer has been forwarded to the dean of the government-run JJ Hospital at Byculla.

With the strike by the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) representing 4,000-odd residents entering its fifth day today,the government has been juggling between senior lecturers, private doctors and residents from private hospitals to cope with the situation in the city's civic and government hospitals.

Municipal Commissioner K Nalinakshan said at a press conference today that hospital deans have been empowered to make ad-hoc appointments of doctors on a contract bais while 40 lecturers were recruited in civic hospitals today.

State Health Minister Digvijay Khanvilkar said at a press conference today that the medical education secretary has been asked to hold talks with MARD, which is adamant on continuing with its agitation till their pay scales are brought at par with those of central government doctors.

Claiming that major and minor surgeries had been conducted in hospitals all over the state, the minister added trauma cases were being given priority. Citing statistics, he claimed that 32,196 patients had been treated at Out-Patients' Departments on November 22, while 14,000 had been treated on November 23 and 27,000on November 24.

Countering the resident doctors' claim that they are paid much less than their counterparts in other states, Khanvilkar said they were paid less in Kerala, West Bengal and Karnataka. As far as comparisions with the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences is concerned, he said each resident in the institute was entrusted with 12 patients compared to 4.5 in Maharashtra.

In a related development, consumer activist Shirish Deshpande had offered to negotiate between MARD and the state government. While another round of discussuions was to have been held today, MARD representatives did not turn up. Stating that MARD had rejected the offer, Organising Secretary and Spokesperson Dr Rajas Deshpande said: ``We don't want to go through agencies which are not official.''

Meanwhile, even as the government is trying to rope in speciality doctors on a contract basis to help out at hospitals, Dean of JJ Hospital, Dr A C Mohanty, said it would be an option of last resort. He pointed out that there couldbe difficulties in adjusting timings of say, surgeries, to suit the specialists' requirements as well as that of the hospital staff as well.