COIMBATORE: Nurses in a private hospital in the city went on a flash strike on Saturday seeking higher salaries and better working conditions. Though nursing staff across the country, including in Chennai, have been unionising and demanding better pay and better work facilities in the past few months, this is the first instance of nurses' unrest in the city.

As many as 450 nursing staff at PSG Hospital demonstrated outside the hospital on Saturday demanding better pay and the right to organise. They alleged that the hospital management was ill-treating those who were trying to organise the staff.

Emergency medical services were initially affected by the protest. Hospital authorities said they have restored normalcy with the help of senior nursing personnel, nursing supervisors, medicos and house surgeons. However, the multi-speciality hospital with an in-patient capacity of about 900 is not admitting fresh patients till the issue is sorted out.

Hospital authorities also denied the allegation that they were ill-treating some of the nursing staff and announced readiness for a dialogue on the contentious issues.

"One of the junior nurses was publicly humiliated in front of the patients and was asked not to enter the ward. We had issued a notice to the hospital authorities seeking explanation before April 23. But with more and more of our colleagues being ill-treated and harassed, we decided to go on a flash strike today morning," said T Mugunthan, vice president, PSG Nurses Welfare Union.

The protestors gathered outside the hospital building with placards and raised slogans against the hospital management. They want the management to comply with the Indian Nursing Council norms of paying minimum salary of Rs 15,000 per month to the nursing staff who have completed BSc Nursing and a minimum of Rs 10,000 for Auxillary Nurse Midwives (ANM). They claimed that some of them were being paid as low salary as Rs 3,000 per month. and were literally struggling to make ends meet as they have been appointed after graduating out of nursing institutes with high course fees.

"My monthly salary is Rs 6,000 while the nursing council of India stipulates the minimum salary of a nurse as Rs 15,000," said Sameer Ahmed, a staff nurse at the hospital. "My family has spent almost Rs 9 lakh for my nursing studies and here I am drawing a salary of Rs 6,500 per month,' said A Nirosha, a nurse at the hospital.

The striking employees alleged that the management was withholding their certificates and not issuing proper relieving orders. Mugunthan added that most of the nursing staff could not take up fresh job offers in other institutions because the hospital wouldn't issue relieving order on time.

The striking nurses also claimed the hospital was overburdening them with work especially in the intensive care unit and the operation theatres. The approved patient to nurse ratio in these units is 1:1, but they were being forced to attend a minimum of four patients. "We take extra vigil to ensure proper care of the patients but in turn get stressed out and our health is getting affected," said Anoop G, another nurse.

The hospital authorities denied the allegations. "We have not ill-treated any of the staff. We provide them free accommodation and pay at a scale on par with the other hospitals in the city. We have made elaborate arrangements to avoid the strike to affect the patients. However, we are not admitting any new patients. We are willing to talk and consider their genuine demands," said Dr Vimal Kumar Govindan, Medical Director, PSG Hospital.