High court order, 5-hour meeting broke AIIMS deadlock

The nurses claimed that they had given a one-month strike notice to the administration, which was to start from Wednesday but was advanced to Monday, when the hospital started the process to hire contractual nurses.

It took the Delhi high court’s intervention and a marathon five hour meeting with the AIIMS administration and representatives of the Union health ministry to get around 3,000 nurses of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to call off their strike — which was threatening to derail health care services at one of the country’s premier health institutes — late on Tuesday night.

Members of AIIMS Nurses Union raise slogans during their indefinite strike over their long-pending demands, including those concerning the Sixth Central Pay Commission and against contractual appointments in New Delhi on Tuesday. (PTI Photo)

On Tuesday, the Delhi high court restrained the nurses from continuing their strike and asked them to resume work. Justice Navin Chawla, while issuing notice to the nurses’ union on the plea of the hospital, said the stay is being granted after the AIIMS gave an assurance to the court that it is looking into the grievances of the nurses.

The nurses claimed that they had given a one-month strike notice to the administration, which was to start from Wednesday but was advanced to Monday, when the hospital started the process to hire contractual nurses — newspaper advertisement was released on Tuesday for walk-in interviews for the three-month nurse’s position.

“When the nurses planned on going on an indefinite strike, we hired contractual nurses. We cannot let patients suffer. These hiring will not be done if nurses do not go on strike,” said a senior official from the hospital administration, on condition of anonymity.

As per the contingency plan prepared for the strike, the emergency services were curtailed with focus on taking care of patients already admitted to the department. Patients in need of emergency surgeries were taken up, whereas routine surgeries or even the semi-urgent ones were delayed.

The contingency plan said that semi-emergency or planned surgeries could be taken up only if resident doctors filled in as scrub nurses and floor nurses in operation theatres.

The senior doctors were also asked to curtail their clinics depending on the number of resident doctors available. Resident doctors from every department were posted to the wards to take care of admitted patients.

“No matter how many resident doctors you post in a ward, when a huge proportion of the staff of any hospital goes on a strike, there is an impact on the services,” said a senior doctor from the hospital, also on condition of anonymity.

Another doctor said, one of their relatives — who was scheduled to undergo a thyroid surgery — was asked to go back home. “They got the date for the surgery after running around a lot and now they have to return because the surgery was cancelled. In fact, most planned surgeries for the day were cancelled,” said the doctor. The hospital usually performs about 100 to 150 surgeries a day, before the Covid pandemic.

After the high court restrained the nurses from continuing with the strike, the nurses union were called for a meeting by the hospital administration around 5.30pm.

“We had given a list of 23 demands and no concrete action has been taken on any of them. As for our main demand, the anomaly in the sixth pay commission’s recommendations, we have been given the same assurance as before -- that the demand will be looked into. After the court order, however, we have no option but to call off the strike. We will present our problems to the court in response to the petition,” said Fameer CK, general secretary of the nurses union.

Dr Randeep Guleria, director of AIIMS, said, “Whatever can be resolved at the level of the institute, we will try to do. Whatever needs to be done at the level of the health ministry will also be looked into within the next few days. However, there are certain matters involving other ministries, which will also be looked into. We are one family so we must resolve our own issues.”

As per officials present in the meeting, no promises were made on the demand for increase in salary as per the alleged anomaly in the implementation of the sixth pay commission.