Nurses and health workers are boycotting their duties as they staged a protest levelling a series of allegations against Aditya Birla Hospital management in Chinchwad, Pune.
The hospital staff has accused the hospital management of causing mental harassment to it's employees. The nurses have also accused the hospital of making them overwork which is against the government norms and attempts were being made to intimidate them through bouncers.
The nurses have also claimed that the doctors in hospitals have been pressurized to handle 55 patients on an average.
The nurses also alleged that housekeeping staff was forced to wear nurses uniform in order to make people visiting the hospital believe they were nurses.
“We are being made to work 12-hour shifts instead of the six hours as mandated by the government. When the health staff gets infected, there is no separate quarantine facility for them. All of them are made to stay in a congested mess,” they alleged.
In a statement, Rekha Dubey, CEO of Aditya Birla Hospital, said, “They don’t want to work, which is their right, and we cannot force anyone to work. We are figuring out alternatives … we are under the MESMA Act and nurses and doctors can’t go on any agitation. The hospital has treated over 1,000 Covid patients so far.”
Regarding the allegations that the health staff was being made to work overtime, Dubey said,“Everybody is stretching duty hours and society is looking at us as healthcare providers… who will take care of the patients? We have already reduced the timing to six hours and the PPEs are also safe… so there is no reason for them to be upset. More than 36 nurses who were infected got admitted and were treated by us,” said Dubey.