The United Nurses Association on Saturday said that the reports that some of the striking nurses of the Lakeshore Hospital here had withdrawn from the strike and rejoined service were wrong.
At a press conference, Jasmine Shah, the president of the association, and other office-bearers said that the management had threatened some of the newly recruited nurses and those who were planning to go abroad, and extracted an undertaking from them that they would not join the ongoing strike.
As many as 450 nurses were still on strike. They had not rejoined the service.
Though the management said that it did not intend to harass anybody, six nurses had been terminated from service. The management even threatened that the striking nurses would be dismissed from service, they alleged. As part of the association's plan to intensify its agitation, a relay hunger strike would be started from Monday before the hospital. It had plans to picket the home of Dr. Philip Augustine, the managing director of the hospital.
The association office-bearers also said that they were conducting the strike in association with the Janakeeya Samara samithi.
Hospital's version
Meanwhile, a statement issued by the Lakeshore Hospital said that the working of the hospital had returned to normal on Saturday and that both the in-patients and out-patients treated the normal number of patients; emergency services were also available. The statement said that the functioning of the hospital last week was normal except on Monday, and that all surgical operations had returned to normal.
Join duty
The statement claimed that three more nurses had resigned from the United Nurses Association and joined their duties, taking the number of nurses who abandoned the strike to 62, after the second stage of the strike was launched.
