HYDERABAD: Despite fighting the Covid-19 battle shoulder to shoulder with doctors and nurses, Gandhi Hospital’s medical support staff, which includes sanitation workers and ward employees, complained of not getting adequate safety gear. But, hospital officials denied the claims.
Speaking to Express on the condition of anonymity, a 37-year-old sanitation worker said, “Doctors and nurses get N95 masks, but none of the sanitation workers at the hospital get it. We are equally at risk as we clean patients’ beds and washrooms. We do not even have disinfectant shoes. There are no changing rooms either for us, we have been complaining about this for long”. Another worker said there were not enough masks at the hospital.
“During our Covid-19 training, we were told that we have to discard used masks even after we remove it once for drinking water or after eating. How do we do that if we do not get that many masks in a day?”
Talking about their bare minimum salaries, a sanitation worker lamented that they get paid around `8,000 for putting their lives on the line. “Do our lives have no value? Even the GHMC (Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation) sanitation department workers have better salaries than us. We have been demanding that our salaries be increased, but our officials keep telling us that they will look into the matter. We do not know when that time will come.”
Contract employees
According to the officials, there are 300 such workers, of which 200 are sanitation staff and 100 are ward workers — all of them are contract employees. The hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr Raja Rao, said there was no dearth of any protective gear for the medical staff.
Fear for their lives
The staff say they are equally at risk as they clean patients’ beds and washrooms. Yet, they do not get N95 masks and disinfectant shoes. They also complained that there are no changing rooms for them. There are 300 medical support staff at the hospital, of which 200 are sanitation staff