Doctors and nurses on COVID-19 duty protest against North MCD administration over alleged non-payment of pending salaries, at Hindu Rao Hospital in New Delhi, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020.
Resident doctors at the civic-run Hindu Rao Hospital on Wednesday protested over their due salaries and went on a "symbolic indefinite strike" even as the BJP, which controls the North Corporation, and the ruling AAP sought to blame each other for the situation.
A group of doctors, who were joined by nurses of the hospital, held placards and raised slogans demanding their due salaries for the last three months, at the main gate of the facility, from 10 am to 12 noon.
Hindu Rao Hospital is the largest municipal hospital in Delhi with 900 beds and is currently a dedicated COVID-19 facility. Many of its healthcare workers had contracted the infection earlier.
Since, it is a dedicated coronavirus facility, the "services will not be essentially affected".
"But we are on a symbolic indefinite strike to make our voices heard to authorities, who have not responded to our appeal so far. We have been doing the symbolic pen down from 9 am to 12 noo for the last several days as well as online protests but no one listened to us," said Abhimanyu Sardana, president of the Resident Doctors Association of the facility.
So, the protest happened today and doctors who are not on COVID-19 rotational duty joined, he said.
"We are humans too and have a family to run. We are risking our lives for humanity in this pandemic. Is is too much to ask for our due salaries," Sardana said.
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the BJP-led North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) Chhail Bihari Goswami, when contacted, claimed that "crores of money in liability is due to NDMC from the Delhi government".
"For the current financial year and FY 2019-20, a huge amount of fund is due for the city government, including under the salary segment. The government had allocated it under their budget, to the civic bodies. Because, they haven't released funds, we are unable to pay salaries," he alleged.
All three municipal corporations are ruled by the BJP. The erstwhile unified MCD and the trifurcated civic bodies have been controlled by the saffron party for over 10 years now.
The AAP shot back, saying, "If the BJP cannot run the MCD, it should resign and hand it over to AAP".
"The MCD has failed to deliver its primary responsibilities be it sanitation, fighting vector-borne diseases, run schools, due to rampant corruption," the AAP alleged in a statement.
Last year, the AAP-led Delhi government "significantly reduced" deaths due to dengue by dint of honest efforts and a very successful awareness campaign, it claimed.
"The BJP should stop misleading people, release the salaries of MCD workers immediately or should leave MCD," the AAP said.
North Delhi Mayor Jai Prakash had recently said, "We are doing everything possible to resolve the issue".
