KOCHI: The government’s decision to provide additional incentives, including risk allowance, to National Health Mission (NHM) employees has not gone down well with many government healthcare workers who are facing salary cuts.
On the frontline ever since the pandemic broke out in the state, the workers, who include doctors, junior public health nurses, public health nurses, junior health inspectors, cleaning staff and attendants, have been putting their lives at risk, with some even getting infected.
On Sunday itself, as many as 50 healthcare workers tested positive for Covid-19 across the state. Despite all this, the government has not offered many of them any incentive, which has made them cry foul.
“Only junior health inspectors who were hired on a temporary basis and are in charge of Covid care centres have been given a five percent risk allowance. We too come under the ‘high-risk’ group and our families too have elders, children and people with health problems,” said Laiju Ignatious, a junior health inspector from Malappuram district.
He said monitoring asymptomatic patients who are in home isolation, helping with contact tracing and data entry, supplying emergency medicines to those in quarantine and visiting patients in their homes are among the tasks that the health inspectors are carrying out.
The Kerala Government Medical Officers Association (KGMOA), an association of doctors, has also expressed its disapproval with the government’s decision.
“We too are entitled to get a risk allowance like those employed under NHM. Doctors in every other state are getting it. Around 85 per cent of Covid patients in the state are treated by doctors employed under the Kerala government. These doctors face a high risk of contracting the virus,” said KGMOA president Dr Joseph Chacko.
Ensure proper payment of salaries: KGMOA PREZ
If the government fails to grant the doctors any incentives, it should at least ensure proper payment of their salaries, says KGMOA president Dr Joseph Chacko