Demanding minimum wages in private hospitals and a notification to bring those not covered in an earlier order, the Kerala State Private Hospital Employees Federation (CITU) began a two-day sit-in here on Tuesday.
Inaugurating the protest, CITU secretary K. Chandran Pillai said minimum wages was a human right. While some hospitals in the private sector had implemented minimum wages, some others had moved court against the Labour Department. Many were working in private hospitals without minimum wages in the past 29 months, he said.
United stand
All health-care employees need to be organised in the fight for minimum wages. For this, private laboratories, scanning centres, and other institutions related to health care should also be brought under the purview of minimum wages, he said.
Federation president M. Anil Kumar presided.
The federation also demanded that hospitals desist from contractual appointments.
A welfare fund for employees should also be formed besides bringing in the private hospital employees Act to provide security to the employees.
Nurses and other employees from private hospitals joined the protest as the nurses’ associations that spearheaded the struggle earlier were not functioning in many hospitals now.
A nurse from a Palakkad hospital said the entry-level wage for a nurse was about ₹6,000 in many hospitals.