The committee for fixing the minimum wages for employees in private hospitals, including nurses, which met here on Thursday recommended to the minimum wages advisory board that nurses be paid the salary decided by the expert committee set up by the government earlier.
Though various hospital managements expressed their strong dissent, the Labour Commissioner decided to forward the committee’s recommendation to the advisory board, along with the dissent note of the hospital managements. It will now be up to the Labour Department to issue the minimum wages notification, based on the advisory board’s report.
The package
The expert committee had recommended that nurses be paid wages on a par with that of their counterparts in the public sector, ranging from ₹20,000 to ₹32,960, depending on the bed strength of hospitals.
A representative of the Indian Nurses Association said that the nurses were not overly worried about the opposition of hospital managements because of the assurance given by the Chief Minister regarding minimum wages and also because there was a Supreme Court recommendation regarding the nurses’ salary.
“Both the court and the Chief Minister had treated the salary issue of nurses separately from that of other hospital employees. We do not foresee a situation wherein nurses are forced to take to the streets again demanding justice. We will wait for the government’s notification,” INA president Mohammed Shihab said.
‘Way too high’
The Kerala Private Hospitals’ Association maintained that the salary raise demanded by nurses as well as trade unions representing other hospital employees was way too high and that hospitals were not in a position to accept them. “The trade unions have demanded almost 100-120% hike in salaries, according to which, a sweeper in a hospital will have to be paid ₹16,000 as minimum wages. The minimum wages committee has sent its recommendation to the advisory board with our dissent. Any pay structure which is not as per the provisions of the MW Act is not acceptable to us. We will seek legal recourse after the government brings out the new MW notification,” KPHA president P.K.M Rasheed said.
