PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/Dehradun
Patients faced difficulties accessing services, including billing, at Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) Hospital on Monday. The issue arose when workers employed under Uttarakhand Purva Sainik Kalyan Nigam Limited (UPNL) protested and boycotted work seeking action on their demands.
About 200 GDMC staff members, including nursing staff, sanitation workers and others working under UPNL, participated in the boycott, significantly affecting services, particularly billing at the hospital. Patients said that a task typically took 15 to 20 minutes at the billing and registration counter which took much more time on Monday due to the unavailability of experienced staff and the temporary deployment of inexperienced workers. However, sanitation and other essential services at the hospital continued as usual.
Regarding hospital operations during the protest, the medical superintendent of the hospital Dr RS Bisht informed that the administration had been informed in advance about the UPNL workers’ protest. To prepare, the hospital administration took proactive measures. On Saturday, the hospital conducted a trial run by temporarily replacing the UPNL workers with other staff to manage essential operations. This trial was successful and a similar approach was implemented on Monday. Bisht stated that services at the hospital were managed smoothly and successfully. In total, 59 nursing staff members work through UPNL at GDMC. However, the administration deployed additional nurses from the existing pool of 350 nursing staff to ensure continuity of services on Monday. Additionally, for sanitation services, 106 workers are contracted through UPNL and considering this, workers transferred from the medical college to cover these roles. Bisht said that the billing counters operated at full capacity on Monday, unaffected by the protest and other services were adequately managed at the hospital.
