M. Venkatesan, Chairman of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis, on Monday visited the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) and held detailed interactions with the safai karamchari community at the institution.
The visit was part of an exercise to study the socio-economic and living conditions of safai karamcharis and take stock of grievances or gaps in welfare measures from personal interactions and through representations.
In his briefing, Rakesh Aggarwal, Director of Jipmer, outlined the journey of the institution from a college of medicine set up by the French government in 1828 to its transfer to the Government of India, and the new campus that came up in 1964. It was directly under the Centre till 2008, after which it became an autonomous body with the status of Institution of National Importance through an Act of Parliament.
The 2000-bed hospital has a medical college with 250 seats annually and runs more than 100 different courses in medicine, nursing and allied health sciences. It had adopted measures for its safai karamcharis, who are an integral part of the Jipmer community.
According to Dr. Aggarwal, they have a major role in the running of the hospital, which visited by 8,000 to 10,000 patients every day along with their family members and caregivers, in addition to a large number of students and staff members working here.
Housekeeping in such a large and diverse campus, with a large residential complex, a school, a post office, two banks, a park and playgrounds, is quite complex and challenging. Despite this, housekeeping staff carry this out efficiently in close coordination with other employees.
It is possibly only through the diligent work of the safai karamchari workforce that the Institute has won a Kayakalp Award for three consecutive years, the Director said.
