THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With no pay for 11 months, life has become a struggle, say security staff at the Mental Health Centre -- which has about 700 inpatients -- in Peroorkada.Ever since the pandemic broke out, training programmes for students stopped, thus choking the institution’s only source of income. Though the finance department had sanctioned Rs 10 crores as a loan to the centre, the authorities allegedly failed to disburse the pending salaries of the 14 security staff, who manage hundreds of patients.
“Life has become a struggle for each one of us,” said Jayashree S, a security staffer, who has been at the centre for over 10 years. “We deal with violent patients every day. There is a huge dearth of security staff at the hospital, and recently one of them quit because of non-payment of salaries. I have four daughters to take care of. I haven’t paid my home loan dues for the past 11 months. I am over 50 and don’t know what to do. I can’t look for another job now.”
Jayashree added that staff representatives had approached ministers and MLAs for help. “Everybody promised help, but no steps have been taken to disburse the pending salary,” she said. “When we asked for pay, the authorities asked us to quit. Nobody takes responsibility.”
A senior official at the centre passed the buck to the finance department. “We don’t have the revenue to pay the salaries. We normally generate revenue for paying staff salaries through the training programmes for students. Thanks to the pandemic, that is not happening,” said the official. Notably, though the hospital authorities had requested at least 25 additional staff under the state government’s Aardram Mission, no action was initiated so far.