Tiff between staff, mgmt takes ugly turn

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, April 7

Tiff between the staff and management of Gian Sagar Medical College and Hospital, Banur, took an ugly turn with the management issuing termination letters to its staff members on WhatsApp, a mobile application. The protesting staff members have received letters from the HR Head informing them about their termination and directing them to hand over their charge.

The letter reads, “Letter of Termination due to non-cooperation towards functioning of medical college and hospital for the past few days resulting in disturbance and complete closure of student teaching as well as emergency hospital services. As you know that our medical college and hospital is under essential service, so this is gross misconduct tarnishing the image of the institution. So, the management terminated your services with immediate effect. You are requested to hand over your charges immediately to your department HoD.”

The move further heated up the issue since the faculty has already boycotted work for the past almost one month due to non-release of their salaries for the past four months. The matter got out of control, following which Secretary Medical Education Hussan Lal sent Director Research and Medical Education (DRME) Dr MK Mohi to the campus.

The director held a meeting with the management and staff and heard both sides of the story. While the staff members were adamant on the release of their salaries, at least two salaries till April 31 in order to resume work, the management urged that they should join the work tomorrow itself and their salaries would be transferred in their account.

The staff and the management reached a deadlock over this and the DRME had to return without any suitable solution. However, she assured the staff that the management could not terminate them over the issue.

Meanwhile, Hussan Lal said they had pulled up the management and asked them to make temporary arrangements to run the classes on a priority as it was a question of future of students.

“We have asked them to either arrange salaries immediately or rope in ad-hoc faculty for the time being so that at least the academic activities don’t suffer,” said Hussan Lal.

What the letter reads

The letter reads, “Letter of Termination due to non-cooperation towards functioning of medical college and hospital for the past few days resulting in disturbance and complete closure of student teaching as well as emergency hospital services. As you know that our medical college and hospital is under essential service, so this is gross misconduct tarnishing the image of the institution. So, the management terminated your services with immediate effect. You are requested to hand over your charges immediately to your department HoD.”

DRME had to return without any solution

The staff and the management reached a deadlock over this and the DRME had to return without any suitable solution. However, she assured the staff that the management could not terminate them over the issue.