Jaipur: Ambulance staff continues strike, patients to suffer even more

In most part of the state the emergency ambulance service was hit on Tuesday as operating staff of emergency ambulance service went on an indefinite strike after failure of two rounds of talks on Monday. On Tuesday, as the government asked the contractor company to find a solution, fresh talks between the company management and 11-member delegation of agitating staff were initiated, but in vain. The agitating employees are demanding increment in their salary and reinstatement of the staff members who were sacked or transferred earlier. 

There are 741 ambulances that includes 108-ambulance service, 104-ambulance service and base ambulances deployed across the under integrated ambulance services and these are being run by a private contractor GVK-EMRI.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, health minister Kalicharan Saraf held a meeting with GVK-EMRI management representatives in which ACS Veenu Gupta and health secretary Naveen Jain were present. “As the company owns the responsibility for human resources related issues, government has asked the company to take this matter seriously and try to solve it as soon as possible. We cannot let our people suffer over conflict between ambulance staff and contractor company,” Saraf said.

Each ambulance usually has an emergency management technician and a driver. The call for strike was given on Monday evening in Jaipur, but initially ambulances in Jodhpur zone were kept out of it. Though, by Tuesday night, all ambulances except Jodhpur district were on strike.