Nightingales’ woes
by
AJ Philip |
Nurses in two leading private hospitals in Kerala are on strike and all efforts to end it have failed so far. They are the Lakeshore Hospital and Research Centre near Kochi and the Kolencherry Medical Mission Hospital at Kolencherry. Their only demand is that their salary and other working conditions should be improved. They were encouraged to take the path of agitation by the success their sisters in some other hospitals had achieved in this manner.
Nurses were one of the most unorganised sections of society, until the United Nurses Association came on the scene spearheading their cause. In the national capital, nurses had to strike work in several private hospitals during the last two years to obtain reasonable wages and a sense of job security. In some hospitals in Kolkata, too, they had to go on strike to press their demands.
Nursing is not a very old profession in India. Nurses were first brought to India to treat soldiers who were injured while suppressing the First War of Independence or Sepoy Mutiny, as it was called by the British, in 1857. However, it was the British and other missionary societies that actually laid the foundation of nursing education in the country.
The women of Kerala were the first to take up nursing as a career in large numbers. They had a headstart in education as the erstwhile Travancore state was a pioneer in promoting women’s education. Soon, nurses from the state found they were in great demand in hospitals all over India. The rise in petroleum prices and the resultant economic boom in the Gulf countries also opened job opportunities for them.
The foreign exchange remittances from the nurses helped thousands of families to improve their economic conditions. Thus, nursing became a coveted profession for poor and middle class girls. Today Kerala has hundreds of nursing institutions which turn out thousands of nurses, who are, unfortunately, unable to find jobs in the state.
As the supply of nurses is more than the demand, private hospitals find it easier to exploit them. As one hospital administrator in Delhi told this writer, “as long as Kerala Express reaches Delhi every day, there will be no shortage of nurses in Delhi”. The result is that they are paid as low a salary as $80, with no fixed duty hours.
In Kerala, an unskilled worker gets a daily wage of $10 but there are nurses who get as low a monthly salary as $50. The administrator of Lakeshore Hospital, a recipient of the prestigious government award, Padma Shri, was heard saying on television that the hospital could not afford to pay the salary the nurses demanded.
Running hospitals is a big business. Lakeshore is considered a five-star hospital, catering to the rich Indians and foreigners, particularly from the Gulf. No, the nurses are not demanding any fancy salary like that of the administrator, whose annual income could be much more than $1 million. They would even settle for as low as $160 a month.
State Labour Minister Shibu Baby John seems to believe that he had done his duty when he said that the government would not use any force to end the strike. Even the government has been giving the nurses a step-motherly treatment. The brighter among the nursing students go for B.Sc and M.Sc courses but there is not a single job reserved for B.Sc and M.Sc nurses in government service.
Graduate and postgraduate nurses have to compete with diploma-holders for jobs in government hospitals. Not even special allowances are given to the more qualified. Needless to say, most nurses prefer to go abroad, either to the Gulf or to Europe and America. But for that they need some practical experience in hospitals.
Hospital managements often keep their certificates so that they don’t leave before they complete their term. Unfortunately the government has not prescribed any pay-scales for nurses. So private hospital managements are under no compulsion to pay them any minimum salary other than those fixed for categories like semi-skilled workers. The tragedy is that even those minimum wages are often not paid to them.
What’s worse, even religious and philanthropic organisations show no qualms in cheating nurses, whom they expect to work round the clock for a pittance. Alas, there is little realisation that nurses are the backbone of the health sector and it is in the national interest that they are paid salaries commensurate with their qualifications. The government should not remain idle as it should take proactive measures to end the exploitation of the modern-day Florence Nightingales. |
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