Hospitals staff not paid even minimum wages
Newly-recruited nurses and ward boys in corporate hospitals are paid only around Rs 5,000 per month.
Hyderabad: Newly-recruited nurses and ward boys in corporate hospitals are paid only around Rs 5,000 per month.
Corporate hospitals, which fleece thousands from patients in a single visit, are pathetic paymasters, say non-medical staff of hospitals like nurses, ward boys and cleaners. Most of these workers do not get paid even the minimum wages prescribed by the Telangana government.
Such workers are usually paid Rs 7,000- Rs 9,000 per month for working 12 hours a day; in rare cases it is around Rs 15,000 if a nurse is experienced. There are also cases, especially among nurses who join hospitals as freshers, wherein they are paid as low as Rs 4,000- Rs 6,000 per month.
As per the Telangana government, minimum wage for a nurse should be Rs 548 per day, which comes to Rs 16,440 for a 30-day month. For ward boys it is around Rs 360, or Rs 10,800 per month.
Mr Srinivas Rao, president of Hyderabad and Suburban Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Employees Union, said, “Even though managements of corporate and private hospitals charge thousands and in many cases lakhs of rupees from their patients for treatment, they treat their non-medical staff like slaves.
Even though they earn huge profits, most private and corporate hospitals do not even pay 4.75 per cent ESI for their employees. Some hospitals even went to court few years back to get a stay on payment of ESI.”