Hyderabad: Khel Khatam Paisa Hazam

Hyderabad: About 1,640 sacked outsourcing medical staff on Thursday knocked the doors of the State Human Rights Commission for justice. The staff, praised as "Devathalu" and frontline warriors during the pandemic, were shown the door overnight. They demanded regularisation of services and appealed to the HRC to do them justice. The commission accepted their representation.

The staff, specially recruited during the pandemic in government hospitals across the State, have been protesting on roads for jobs again during the last four days. All the outsourcing employees have been barred from service since July 5 and asked not to come to work, as they were terminated. The staff is planning to file a petition in the State High Court.

The Director Medical Education had issued the termination letters of the specially recruited staff on Monday. In the order he instructed DMHOs to replace the staff with the 2017 batch, who were recruited through the TSPSC. The outsourcing staff were recruited in 2020 on contract of one year, which they completed on March 31, 2021. The contract was extended for one year vide GO issued on May 15.

A staff nurse Anitha The Hans India: "Despite issuing orders, the government changing the decision is not the right way to deal with the employees even if they are outsourcing. She said the government had recruited them in an emergency during the pandemic. "We preferred government hospitals, over private, as many private hospitals lured us with high pay. We refused the offers and joined the government hospitals in the hope of regularisation. The government backstabbed us and left us helpless on roads" Expressing anger, another nurse, Puniya, said "the government had treated us well while recruiting us, but now it changed its attitude and is behaving rudely. We are unable to meet authorities--- who had invited us on our joining---as they seem to be avoiding us. We have also not been paid salaries for the last three months and removed suddenly, she complained."

One nurse said "we sacrificed ourselves while serving in government hospitals. Many of us put our lives at risk. Many were pregnant while being recruited. Many with children worked hard to render service. For this we are rewarded with insults; we are being trashed and detained by the police. The nurses claimed that they were recruited at a crucial time when the pandemic was at its peak. The families of the dead patients were refusing to take the bodies and were asking us to perform the last rites. We worked with dedication in such critical situations. Now we are sacked overnight without any information. We did not deserve this.