More than 4,000 public doctors will be offered HK$8,000 to HK$100,000 compensation for being on off-site call duties on public holidays or days off in the past four years, under a Hospital Authority package to be discussed today. The Court of Final Appeal ruled in October that public doctors were entitled to a day off if they were required to be on call on public holidays or their days off, even though they might not be needed. The court held that a doctor was deprived of a rest day in such circumstances because he had to be close enough to the hospital to be able to get there within 30 minutes, could not drink alcohol and had to be ready to respond to calls. But it rejected doctors' claim for pay or time off for working overtime. Since the October ruling, the authority has been negotiating with doctors on a settlement package. Under the latest proposal, put to a staff consultative group on Tuesday and to be discussed at a board meeting today, doctors are offered cash compensation according to seniority. It will cover all off-site calls since 2006, as liability before that has been covered by a previous settlement. Medical officers who seldom need to take off-site calls are offered HK$8,000 to just under HK$10,000. For medical officers with specialist qualifications, the amount will range to more than HK$30,000. It will increase further from senior medical officers to consultants and chiefs of services. The maximum amount is about HK$100,000 for an individual doctor. The total cost to the authority will be less than HK$300 million. Some specialties would receive different compensation. For example, medical officers for accident and emergency departments who need to make more frequent off-site calls will receive higher compensation. Doctors who do not carry out off-site duties - such as those working for general outpatient or family medicine clinics - will not be covered. Under the public hospitals on-call system, many specialties have designated all consultants and chiefs of services as the third or fourth to be called, which is why they are eligible for the most compensation. Junior doctors yesterday criticised the package as 'unfair', although the authority designed it strictly based on the court ruling. 'In legal terms, the package is fair because many consultants did have their names on the roster, but they very rarely had to go back to the hospital to help out,' a public doctor, who did not wish to be named, said. 'Some have their names on the roster for 365 days a year, but only once do they get called in to work. For junior doctors, they all work very hard and spend most of their duties at hospitals, but under this ruling, they will receive the least. The authority needs to take care of this.' President of the Public Doctors' Association Dr Ho Pak-leung said the authority should compensate junior staff by offering an extra allowance. In March 2006, a lower court ruled that public doctors could claim compensation for time actually worked at hospital on rest days, public and statutory holidays, and that they could not be compensated for working overtime. After that ruling, the authority offered a HK$629 million settlement to 4,600 doctors. About HK$500 million has been paid so far and the pick-up rate has been about 90 per cent. Under that package, the highest payout was more than HK$220,000 for a single doctor. Ho believes that the pick-up rate for the latest settlement package will be lower, given the negative sentiment among junior doctors. Those who rejected the previous HK$629 million package - including the 100 plaintiffs in the 2006 court case and about 200 others - are still seeking compensation from the Labour Tribunal and the court. One of the lead plaintiffs, Dr Leung Ka-lau, is claiming more than HK$2 million for overtime work between 1996 and 2002. Leung, a medical legislator, said he and other claimants had not yet reached any agreement with the authority. For future on-call duties falling on public holidays and days off, the authority under the court ruling has compensated doctors with a day off. Payout plan The package has been under discussion since an October court ruling The total cost to the Hospital Authority, in Hong Kong dollars, will be about: $300m