Patients feel the crunch in hospital-staff standoff

Patients at Prince Aly Khan Hospital have been getting their meals late for the past six months due to shortage of cooking staff members. Though the hospital has a sanctioned strength of eight employees for the kitchen department, only five are employed, forcing them to work 12-hour shifts, in violation of labour laws.

The employees allege that the management is harassing them as they have joined a newly formed union instead of an old one which they say is corrupt.

The scheduled work timings of the kitchen staffers which is available with The Asian Age, shows that the five employees are asked by the management to work even for 12 hours, which violates not only their contracts but labour laws as well. This not only affects the health of the staff members but their service as well.

When The Asian Age visited the hospital on an afternoon, many relatives of patients complained about the delay in delivery of food. “This is the second day, I am noticing that the lunch has been delayed by 45 minutes. The patient needs to take medicine after lunch so delaying it may cause problems I will try to get food from outside next day,” said Ramesh Yadav, a son of a patient who is undergoing cardiac treatment at the hospital.

Some employees in the hospital said the hospital had kept them short-staffed for the past six months despite several requests to recruit new employees. “Though the hospital is getting regular financial support, they are still not hiring people just to harass us as we have joined the newly formed union and the authority supports the old one that’s is riddled with corruption,” said Sachin Sardar, an employee with the hospital.Recently, Surjan Singh from the kitchen department went home early after working for eight hours, he was suspended the next day for not completing his office hours, which are counted as 12 hours.

Mr Singh in response to the suspension wrote a letter stating, “With reference to your letter dated 14-11-2015, I beg to submit that I have not committed any act of disobedience. I continued to work as per the workload assigned to me. I was not officially informed about the changes.”

Some cooking staffers said that an employee from the kitchen department had fallen ill due to overwork, but the hospital did not take steps to recruit new employees.

The hospital management refused to comment on the story. This is not the first time that the hospital staffers have raised their voice against the management. Last year, in December, around 300 staffers from the hospital had gone on strike for seven hours over issues relating to wages, leaves and age of retirement among others.