With over a thousand ambulances off road, emergency patients have to resort to private ambulances and vehicles for reaching hospitals
Scores of patients and pregnant women suffered as the Ambulances remained off road on Wednesday also. The health service was affected as strike of integrated ambulance service employees entered into third day. The government, however, held several rounds of talks with employees’ delegation and the service provider GVK EMRI but deadlock continued to make lives miserable for patients. The government has pressed roadways drivers into service to drive abundant ambulances.
“We are trying to pacify the agitating staff and arrive at some conclusion. In the meantime, we have made arrangements with the help of district Collectors to run the services,” said Naveen Jain, Secretary, Medical, Health & Family Welfare.
The ambulance staff strike has left health services in ‘coma’. People are facing severe problems in taking patients and injured to hospitals. With more than a thousand ambulances going off road, patients are seen forced to arrange private vehicles or private ambulances. That created shortage of such medical vehicles, which in turn have become unreasonably costlier than ever.
The ambulance staff has come out of a 15 point demand charter which include salary hike, overtime incentive and fixed working hours mainly. They are also demanding government payrolls for themselves.
Rajasthan Aapatkalin Ambulance Karmchari Ekta Union, the body under which ambulance staff is agitating, claims that more than 1,400 ambulances including the 108 emergency service, 104 Janani Express service and the base ambulance service across the state are off track, crippling easy and efficient ferry of patients to hospitals for what they were deployed.
Sensing the strike, the government had taken a pre-emptive action when it issued a notification on March 16, declaring the ambulance services as essential services under the Rajasthan Essential Services Maintenance Act (RESMA), 1970. But that failed to deter the ambulance staff to go on strike.
“If government wants it can arrest those on strike under RESMA. But we don’t see any possibility of it happening as such drastic action rarely bear any result,” said a senior official.
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