HYDERABAD: About 190 emergency-ward staffers, who were recruited to work in Covid sections at Gandhi Hospital in 2020, were let off recently. The ‘fired’ workers lamented that they left their families and sacrificed their priorities to help the State brave the pandemic but now the authorities have left them to fend for themselves.
There were 244 emergency ward personnel who were recruited as Class-4 outsourced workers for the first wave of Covid pandemic. Initially, they were being paid Rs 12,500 per month, which increased to Rs 15,000, which after deductions, came to around Rs 13,500 per month on hand.
While all 244 were under a single contractor, only 50 of them were retained by the new contractor. Most of the ones given pink slips hail from rural areas are are are below poverty-line households. The workers are contemplating taking to legal recourse to save their jobs.
“When we insisted, the hospital superintendent told us that it was like we went to attend a wedding, and we have to leave after the ceremony just like everybody else. We took the cough, sneeze, vomit and faeces of the patients on our bodies while serving them. We had an expectation that someday we will be regularised. But now we have been left on the roads. How will be pay the school fees of our children and take care of our families now,” questioned U Bhavani, one of the terminated outsourced workers.