Nurses of private hospitals in Thrissur district will go on a 72-hour agitation from 7 a.m. on Tuesday demanding an increase in their wages.
The United Nurses Association (UNA) has called for the agitation seeking minimum wages of at least ₹40,000. They are also demanding that nurses in the private sector be paid salaries on a par with the salaries of nurses in public sector hospitals. They are seeking scrapping of contract laws and enforcing labour laws, besides implementing the latest recommendations of the Pay Commission.
According to the UNA, the nurses will boycott all services, including intensive care unit duty, for 72 hours. None of the nurses will join duty on these days, it said.
Two hospitals exempted
Two private hospitals in the district, which have enhanced the minimum wages, have been spared from the strike.
National president of the UNA Jasmin Shah said that though the minimum wages of nurses had been fixed as ₹20,000 in 2017, only 400 plus private hospitals in the State had implemented it, while over 1,000 hospitals, including major corporate hospitals, continued to pay a pittance to nurses.
“The revision of minimum wages should have happened in 2020 but with the pandemic setting in, we chose to wait patiently. The High Court had in January this year ordered the State government to revise the minimum wages of nurses in the private sector within three months. But this process is likely to be delayed as hospital managements are fighting this tooth and nail,” Mr. Shah said.
He said that nurses had no other option but to strike as the UNA was not even represented in the industrial relations committee meetings. The general hike in the cost of living was affecting nurses too, he reminded.
He said that even when many small and medium hospitals were considering revision of minimum wages of the nursing staff, it was the major corporate hospitals which were refusing to implement even the minimum wages fixed in 2017.
Mr. Shah said that the strike would be extended to all districts in phases as a Statewide strike by nurses all at once might trigger major crises.
Talks on
Meanwhile, discussions are ongoing in many hospitals, with the hospital managements trying to avert the strike slated to begin on Tuesday.
Following the strike call, some of the hospitals in the district have started discharging patients. Relatives have been directed to get the patients admitted to hospitals in neighbouring districts.
According to the private hospital managements, the State government will take a decision on increase in wages. Though multiple rounds of discussions were held, no consensus could be reached.
No interim order: HC
The Kerala High Court on Monday declined to pass any interim order restraining the nurses from going on strike.
When the counsel for the Kerala Private Hospitals’ Association made a plea for restraining the strike, Justice Ziyad Rahman A.A. orally observed that the court was not inclined to pass such an interim order. In a petition, the association sought a directive to the State government to prohibit the strike by invoking the provisions of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA).
