Hamdard Hospital Terminates 84 Nurses for Demanding Basic Facilities

Hakeem Abdul Hameed Centenary (HAHC) Hospital under Hamdard University in Delhi issued a notice allegedly dismissing 84 nurses, after they demanded access to basic facilities like N-95 masks, personal protective equipment (PPEs), better working hours, drinking water, free COVID-19 tests, adequate quarantine facilities and health policies for nurses on COVID-19 duty.

Instead of addressing the concerns raised by the nurses, the hospital administration has decided to terminate their contracts. Most of these nurses claimed that their positions were about to be regularised. According to HAHC Hospital guidelines, nurses who have worked there for more than five years would be made permanent. All the nurses who were terminated had worked between three to six years in the hospital. The hospital has put out an advertisement for recruitment of nurses.

Gufrana Khatoon, a nurse who had been working with HAHC Hospital, told National Herald, “The hospital management has been extremely insensitive to our requests. We have not demanded anything out of the ordinary. The hospital expects us to work more than 12 hours in a PPE and that is taking a toll on our health. Standing in a PPE for more than three to four hours is strenuous, let alone 12 hours. They do not provide us with drinking water.” She heard the news about their firing while she is in quarantine, which began after having tested positive for the virus on July 3.

Khatoon was not provided with free testing despite showing symptoms of COVID-19. She said, “There is a lab in the hospital, but all of us are required to pay. After I questioned the hospital management about their policy, they said I would only have to pay 50% of the test amount. I paid Rs 1,200 for getting tested. The staff should be tested for free. It is the hospital’s responsibility to take care of us. We have contracted the virus because we were working in COVID-19 wards. If I couldn’t pay the amount, I wouldn’t have tested and then I would have been transmitting the virus.”

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In the termination order dated July 11, HAHC hospital administration stated that these nurses were being relieved because of ‘absence from office without sanctioned leave and absent without intimation’. However, several of them were on duty till July 11 and the others were in quarantine. Several nurses told the National Herald that the hospital administration’s decision was arbitrary. On July 2, the hospital had released an order stating that due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and HAHC hospital being declared a COVID-19 hospital, both nurses and doctors were to refrain from sending resignation applications and leave without pay requests citing personal reasons.

The hospital administration, however, has said that nurses were not terminated, but they were asked to stop working because their contracts have expired. Dr Sunil Kohli, the officiating medical superintendent of HAHC Hospital, told National Herald, “The nurses were not terminated. Their contracts had expired, and it is the end of their contractual obligations. Is not the employer entitled to decide its own employees? The organisation must reward good employees. False allegations are being made.”

After receiving a complaint from the HAHC health workers, the Indian Professional Nurses Association (IPNA) sent a letter to the medical superintendent and followed it up with a legal notice. The United Nurses Association wrote a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and state labour minister Gopal Rai requesting their intervention in the matter.

In the letters, it was also pointed out that in the ICUs in HAHC, the nurse to patient ratio was 1:6, while according to nursing guidelines nurse-patient ratio for each shift in every critical care unit should be 1:1. The associations have raised the issues of lack of donning and doffing area, the hospital’s reluctance to permit COVID-19 tests for nurses who are working in COVID-19 wards, no check-up before shifting nurses from COVID-19 to non- COVID-19 wards and denial of salary as per government guidelines.

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