ABMH nurses sit on strike over work hrs

70-80 of them accuse mgmt of exploitation with stretched duty, sparse breaks, bad PPE kits and food; hospital denies charges

Around 70-80 nurses at Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital (ABMH), mostly working at its COVID-19 wards, have stopped work protesting harassment by the hospital’s management, subjecting them to long working hours, poor quality food, inadequate safety gears and low pay scale. But the hospital administration seems to be in no mood to indulge their belligerence and has given them an ultimatum to quit so they can appoint fresh staff and operations are not hampered.

The disgruntled nurses, amounting to less than a third of the hospital’s strength of 350 nurses, had congregated outside the hospital at 9 am on Thursday to mark their protest. They insisted that while they were keen to work, the management is unwilling to comply with their request for certain changes, though it had agreed to them on July 3.

During the protest, one nurse made some serious allegations, saying, “When nurse are not present in a COVID ward, housekeeping staff are given personal protective equipment (PPE) to wear and roam the place. The duty rota has been stretched to 12 hours and we are made to work for seven days at a stretch before being given a day off. This is in complete violation of government protocols.”

The nurses also complained that they are overloaded. In the intensive care units, one staff nurse is put in charge of taking care of over 15 patients, while in regular COVID-19 wards, a single nurse is deployed for 50 patients, they alleged. “After we demanded changes to our working conditions, the hospital, in an unfair manner, told us to vacate our residential accommodation in 24 hours,” a nurse said.


Yet another nurse, also on condition of anonymity, pointed out, “We are not getting any rest. Even if we test positive for the virus, we’re given a break of only five days. The food is usually half-cooked and we have to call several times to get our meals, which never come on time. Also, the hospital is not providing adequate PPE kits, due to which over 25 staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.”

A clearly enraged Rekha Dubey, chief executive officer of ABMH, refuted these claims and categorically stated that unhappy staff are free to leave as the hospital is exploring possibilities of replacing them. She dismissed claims that housekeeping staff man wards as a false story concocted by the protesters.

“We’ve followed all protocols of circulation for night shifts and weekly offs. They have been put on six-hour duty, no more. In the present situation, everyone has reposed a lot of faith in the healthcare fraterni- ty, but these people are seeking to make a fortune of it, shaming the noble profession. We have senior and other nurses working here without complaints that this particular group has,” she retorted.

Countering the picture of exploitation protestors have drawn of the hospital management, she added, “Every year, we implement increments in July. This year, while doing it we did a market correction, due to which they got an almost double increment. Few organisations have been able to pull this off in the midst of the recession being faced by the industry. We’re also the one who introduced COVID allowance for our staff in April to ensure their holistic care.”