Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday showered sops on doctors raising the retirement age of faculty members of government medical colleges to 65 years and bringing pay scales of KGMU teachers here on par with SGPGIMS.

"Keeping in mind the specialist services being done by the teachers of the King Gerorge's Medical University, their pay scales will be at par with the Sanjay Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences here," Akhilesh said, addressing a function organised by KGMU.

"The retirement age of faculty members of the government medical colleges would be 65 years," he also said.

Akhilesh, who during the programme inaugurated differnt schemes of KGMU worth Rs 350 crore, also assured that his government would not allow resource crunch to come in the way of developing the KGMU as the best institute in the world.

Speaking on the high repute of the university, he said its students working world over are respectfully referred to as "Georgians" and his government wanted to contribute more in maintaining this reputation.

Listing the works done by his government in medical health sector, Akhilesh said arrangements for free treatment of serious ailments has been made in medical colleges and government hospitals.

New medical colleges are being set up in the state through which more doctors would be available for the poor, he said.

Referring to his ambitious 'ambulance service' through which ambulances are available within 20 minutes if required, he said that similarly state government is working on improving police service and steps are being taken to ensure that it reaches in 15 minutes time.

Speaking on the occasion, Medical and Health Minister Ahmed Hasan said that in the past over two years 500 MBBS seats have been increased. ---- PTI