Gandhi Nursing Outsourcing Staff Threaten Strike

The outsourcing nursing employees of the Gandhi Hospital on Monday stopped work and staged a dharna from 8 am to 10 am in protest against the non-payment of their salaries for the last three months.

Addressing the protestors, AITUC state president V S Bose lamented that though they had been taking up the issue with the officials and the contractors concerned several times, the latter remained negligent though the nursing staff had even abandoned duties and crippled the hospital's working for a day.

He said that the nursing staff had to resort to another dharna on Monday for two hours in the morning to wake up the officials and contractors from their deep slumber and stop them from blaming each other over the issue and resolve it immediately.

AITUC Telangana Medical Contract Employees & Workers' Union President M Narsimha said that the outsourcing employees were already working on paltry salaries, and now had not been receiving even those salaries for the past three months, seriously compounding their financial situations. They had now been reduced to organizing protests and dharnas every three months to receive their salaries. Since their duties involved handling crises and emergencies they were attending to them despite not getting paid, but they would be constrained to go on an indefinite strike if their appeals for salaries fell on deaf ears, he warned.