HYDERABAD: Service at Gandhi Hospital, a Level-III Covid-19 treatment centre, was massively impacted on Wednesday as 140 permanent staff nurses were left to handle hundreds of Covid-19 patients after contract nurses went on an indefinite strike. The hospital is already facing a shortage of nurses, and with the 220 contract nurses on strike, the burden has fallen completely on the remaining 140 people.
The contract nurses stated that the State government was not paying them equitably. Calling out the need for ‘Equal Pay for Equal work’, they demanded that they be made permanent staff and their salaries be increased from`15,000, to `17,000. Most of them have been working on contract basis for the past 15 years.
The issue has been present before as well, however in time of the Covid 19 pandemic, where role of health workers has been on the frontline of the war against a deadly virus, the contract staff say that they deserve their due. “We have several financial constraints.
We have been making do with it until now, however since the pandemic began there has been added pressure on us monetarily,” noted Laxmi GH, a nurse. “We have demanded regularisation, but they say they have no budget. They must at least increase our basic pay. No official has reached out to us till now,” added Meghamala, a nurse.