After having spent eight hours at the Cochin International Airport awaiting three flights and ferrying passengers till the early hours, Vishnu K. just about managed to squeeze in some rest before he was back with a 108 ambulance at the port, waiting for the first batch of repatriates who arrived by sea recently.
Vishnu drives one of the sixteen 108 ambulances that are on COVID-19 duty in the district. With erratic salary payments, fear of contracting the disease, and the long inter-district trips he has made, he is fuelled mostly by the absolute necessity of the service he renders, he says. After 12 straight days of back-to-back shifts, he is at home for a break. “Initially, my family was worried. But we have been careful. I make sure I have changed my clothes and taken a bath before I enter the house,” says Vishnu, who has a little child at home. Besides, contact with passengers is limited, he adds.
Inside the vehicle, drivers communicate with passengers only via phone, and on the recent airport runs, they are provided with PPE kits.
Finding three meals a day in the midst of the lockdown was an ordeal, says Vishnu. With this month’s salary being delayed, several workers are still dependent on the goodwill of strangers in their neighbourhood who pack food for them, he adds.
Yadu Krishnan, who pilots another 108 ambulance, recalls a trip from the Kochi airport to Kasaragod, transporting five returnees from West Asia, soon after the lockdown was imposed, leaving shops shut. “We arrived starving at their home in Kasaragod, where a relative of the passengers packed food for us,” he says.
Now, each day involves long hours of waiting at the airport or hospitals, Vishnu says, often followed by a trip in a sweltering PPE kit. If they are not awaiting flights, they take symptomatic people to hospitals for tests, or transport discharged patients home. Drivers have been provided with rooms at the hospitals to which they are attached but have ended up sleeping in places like pavements at the airport parking area, Yadu Krishnan says.
Another ambulance driver says that irregularity in payments had left him borrowing even for basic necessities. Ambulances are operated on a public-private partnership basis with a Telangana-based company. Nearly 130 workers, including drivers and emergency medical technicians, are employed in the district, he says.
