Strike adds to patients’ pain at Panchkula Civil Hospital

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, January 16

A strike by contractual Class IV workers at the Civil Hospital, Sector 6, resulted in long queues at the OPD registration counters due to which patients had to suffer. The OPD starts at 8 am in the hospital and by 10 am the queues were so long that the whole room was full and patients had to wait for hours to get their cards made.

The protesters said they had not been paid their arrears and provident fund for over two years and the contractor was not paying them their full salaries. Contractor Sanjay Gupta’s advocate said the protesters were blackmailing them and they had already paid most of their dues and had asked them to wait a little more till the government cleared their dues.

Earlier, the workers had protested nearly a month ago and the contractor had then given in writing that he would soon clear their dues. The protesters said he failed to do so and this led to the protest. They added that some of their co-workers had been fired for unjust reasons and demanded that they be re-employed. The Civil Surgeon, Panchkula, Dr VK Bansal, said, “A show-cause notice has been issued to the contractor and normalcy will hopefully be restored tomorrow.”

While 206 workers work under contractor Sanjay Gupta, around 100 more, who work under a different contractor, had joined the protest to show support to them. However, not all of them joined the protest. This also led to a verbal quarrel between the protesters and the police after the police objected to the protesters going inside the hospital to call other employees.

The police argued that they should not disturb the functioning of the hospital. The protesters maintained that the job of the police was to ensure peace in the hospital and they had done nothing to disturb it. The protesters said the strike would continue till their demands were met.