pic courtesy- doolnews
John (not original name) is not used
to raising slogans. He prefers to give words of comfort to patients. But in the
last one week, sloganeering is all that he has done. He is one among the 1500
nurses who braved the extreme heat and gathered in front of the Victoria memorial
hall near Madras Central three days back to fight for their rights.
He has been working in the Fortis
Malar hospital in Madras for the past two years. His salary of Rs.5000 is less
than even the monthly interest on his education loan amount of Rs. 5 lakhs. Leave
alone savings, this youth hailing from Trissur district in Kerala has to depend
on his not so well-to-do family to even repay his loan. This is not an isolated story. It is a sad
commentary on the nursing profession in India that this is the case with most
of the nurses working in private hospitals in India. A Government nurse gets a
starting salary of around Rs. 20,000 while abroad it is in lakhs.
Many of the nurses I met talked
about the pathetic working conditions that they are subject to. In many
hospitals, they end up doing the work that is meant to be done by the
housekeeping staff. They pointed me to an ad for nurses put up by one of these
hospitals on Naukri, listing food preparation and cleaning as part of their
duties.
The case of night duties is even
worse. “We are stipulated to work eight hours daily. But usually that stretches
to ten hours and sometimes to double shifts. We are not paid extra for that.
For night duty, we get a paltry 15 rupees per night,” says John. Most of the
hospitals have put up cameras to monitor whether the nurses are sleeping while
on duty. “Even if we close our eyes for a minute, we have to give explanation
the very next day,” he added.
Removal of the bond system is
another of the nurses’ demands. By this system, if they have to resign from the
hospital within 2 years and go for a better option, they have to pay Rs.1 – 2 lakhs
to the management. Their certificates are with the management. So they can
choose to not return it and scuttle the plans to resign.
The nurses’ strike got its first
spark in October last year at the Mumbai Asian Heart Institute when Beena Baby,
a nurse committed suicide as she was unable to pay the amount for breaking the
bond. From there, it spread to Kerala, where it snowballed into a major strike
with nurses from almost all major private hospitals staying away from work.
This resulted in the managements agreeing to revise the salaries.
The strikes in Kerala saw the hospital
managements unleashing dirty tactics on the striking nurses. When the strike
started in the Amrita hospital in Ernakulam, the management there spread the
rumour that Christian groups are behind this. The strike also saw the unveiling
of the real ‘kind’ face of the MATA with many of the association leaders
getting beaten up ‘mysteriously’ inside her abode and getting hospitalized. Maybe,
this was part of ‘Her’ magic trick to bring the nurses back to the hospitals.
When the strike reached Angamaly
Little Flower hospital, the nurses were branded as having anti-christian
leanings. The church joined the management in support by reading out statements
against the nurses during the Sunday mass and by even taking out a protest
march. Thankfully, most of the people didn’t fall for this religious propaganda
and even jeered the church authorities who took out the march. In the end, all
of these hospitals fell in line and agreed to the nurses demands.
Jinu Varghese, National Secretary
of All India Private Nurses Association said, “Till few years back, the nurses
used to join the hospitals in India just to get the experience certificate to
go abroad, where we are highly paid. But after the recession, the jobs there
have shrunk and so most of us are working here for the long term. That is when
we started questioning the ridiculously low wages and other unfair practices
like the bond system and confiscation of certificates that are followed by hospital
managements all over India”
“Ideally, it should be 8 hours
work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours for ourselves. But after the duty which
exceeds 10 hours, we hardly get any time for anything else.”
They also talked about the
procedure called ‘Code blue’ used in hospitals. This is used to indicate a
patient requiring urgent attention. In case of an emergency, the person who is
with the patient raises this alarm and within a minute a specified team of
doctors and nurses rush to the spot. This is mostly used in case of cardiac
arrest. But even if it was not a case of cardiac arrest (patients do get
unconscious sometimes), once code blue is raised, the particular patient is
billed Rs.10,000. The reason the hospitals cite for this is usage of ‘manpower’.
But nurses who are part of this ‘manpower’ are not paid anything.
Most of the private hospitals
have very high nursing procedure charges are part of all hospital bills. Though
this particular item in the bill is for the services rendered by the nurse,
little of that goes to their salary slip. The main aim of the private hospitals
is to increase the number of patients and decrease the number of staff.
The nurses’ strike started in
three private hospitals in Chennai last week. Apollo, Fortis Malar and Madras
Medical Mission Hospital, reeled under the impact of the strike as the nurses
stayed away from work en masse. To tide over the crisis, Fortis Malar had flown
in 70 nurses from their Delhi branch this Sunday whereas Apollo depended on the
student nurses from their medical college. Even then, these hospitals could not
handle the situation and refused to take in new cases, unless it was an
emergency.
The strike at Madras Medical
Mission hospital ended on Monday itself with the management agreeing to double
the current salary of Rs.6000 and also to do away with the bond system. The
week saw many failed rounds of mediations with the labour commissioner acting
as the go-between. By the end of the week, both Fortis and Malar agreed to increase
the salary to Rs.12,000.
“There is no doubt that the hospital
managements are exploiting the nurses and they have every right to protest. But
before going ahead with the strike they should’ve approached the labour department
and tried to sort it out. They should’ve kept in mind that nursing is an essential
service,” said C.Subburajan, Additional labour commissioner.
Lekha(name changed) says that
they had given prior notice to the management and went ahead with the strike as
there was no response to the notice. “We are not paid enough or given enough
respect for the kind of work that we do. We can’t even pay off our education
loans with the salary that we get here. We had no other way but to go on
strike.”
“Last year, Fortis Malar had a
profit of over 100 crores(I went through the annual report and realized that it
is actually 136 crores). Even if they agree to pay us the salary that we are
demanding, only 3 crores will be reduced from the overall profit,” she
added.
Most of the hospital managements
refused to talk to me on this issue. Apollo people redirected me to their HR
department, where the HR head seemed to be in a perpetual meeting mode. The
phone number that they gave me never answered the call.
One of the officials from a
private hospital here agreed to talk after I made a second visit. According to
him, his hospital is providing accommodation and transport (which they've valued at about 7000) to the nurses. So effectively they are already drawing a
salary of more than Rs. 10,000. He evaded my question on how one can survive
with less than Rs.5000 in a city like Chennai, even considering the accommodation
and transport part. He also pointed to the huge number of private nursing
colleges churning out nurses who are not up to the standard. This prompted a
question on their selection process which he said is stringent. But he did
agree to the fact that the nurses were paid very less all over the country
owing to a lack of wage standards.
In the coming days, we will most
probably see this strike spreading to other parts of the country. The private
hospital managements should appreciate the efforts of nurses, who are the
backbone of the health sector. When you make crores out of this business, when
you pay lakhs to a doctor, you should also acknowledge the poor souls who are
doing the maximum work.
