‘Video recorder was left on in Mumbai doctors’ changing area’

Fury and fear were in the air as resident doctors marched at Azad Maidan on Friday in support of their fallen colleague who was raped and murdered 18875 km away at Kolkatarsquos RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 The anger over something like this happening to one of their own was mixed in with the terrifying thought ldquoit could have happened to any of themrdquoThat this happened in their workplacemdasha place of healingmdashand the fact that the suspected perpetrator was a familiar face in the hospital has sent shockwaves across the medical fraternity all the way from Kolkata to MumbaiThe Kolkata Police arrested Sanjoy Roy 33 a civic volunteer reported to have an allaccess pass at civic hospitals in the West Bengal capital As a contractual worker he was a known face among the local police and hospital staff but may not have undergone the same vetting process and training and sensitisation as a fulltime cop or healthcare worker It was only during investigation of the doctorrsquos murder that it emerged Roy had allegedly displayed a pattern of abusive behaviour towards womenDoctors protesting at Azad Maidan on Friday PicsAtul KambleIn Mumbairsquos perpetually shortstaffed hospitals as well there are a growing number of contractual workers brought in to fill the gap in manpower Hired under the Multipurpose Labour MTL scheme for a fraction of the cost of fulltime employees these contractual workers fulfil crucial roles of ward boys semitrained technicians among others But with no way to know if they have gone through appropriate background checks the fear remains that a Kolkatalike incident may occur here too There are currently 3000 contractual workers across hospitals in the cityMultiple nurses and doctors in the city have already reported incidents of being filmed surreptitiously in changing rooms and bathrooms says Prakash Devdas president of the Municipal Health Service Employees Association as well as Mahapalika Arogya Seva Karmachari Sanghatana A labour lawyer of 30 years the man probably knows most nurses doctors and community health workers in MumbaiDevdas meets us in his Bandra office before heading out for a court hearing on a nurse facing unlawful termination by a civic hospital He is of the opinion that tragic as the Kolkata rape case is the scenario in Mumbai is not much better ldquoCurrently the safety and security of healthcare workers be it nurses doctors or even miscellaneous staff is held together by a few vigilant staff members in each of these civic hospitalsrdquo he saysOutpatient Department OPD at a hospital in Kolkata holds a desolate look on August 17 2024 Medical professionals around India took part in protests relating to the rape and murder of a doctor The striking doctors have only grown in number affecting services across the country but essential or life saving medical help is still provided PicGetty ImagesThese are hospitals where women employees are already working in unhygienic and unsafe conditions At many facilities doctors and nurses donrsquot have easy access to womenrsquos restrooms on all floors and when they do the loos are often unhygienic At some hospitals there are no separate resting rooms for women doctors on night dutyIn the midst of all this overworked doctors now have to watch out for yet another threatmdashtemp workers with no regard for hospital rules or the law ldquoA few months ago a phone was secretly placed in the doctorrsquos changing area in a civic hospital in Kandivli with video recording on The incident came to light when an MTL worker tried to sneak back in and take his phone Doctors who were there at the time realised that the phone had been kept there with the camera lens facing outward They complained to the dean but nothing happenedrdquo says DevdasAt the same hospital a nurse reveals that it is rare for her to find a free moment in which she can rest when the chance comes she naps at her desk which is the only safe space to let her guard down ldquoI just put my head down and take my nap there I cannot leave the desk both because there is too much work but also because you canrsquot sleep without someone else keeping guard in the room You cannot go off alone to naprdquo she saysNeha Singh from the ldquoWhy Loiterrdquo campaing has been fighting for women to have agency over public spacesThe risk of violent outbursts or crime at hospitals increases with temp workers because they have less to lose says Devdas ldquoPermanent staff have a lot to lose None of them would risk their job over something like this But the MTL workers are free agents They are not verified by the police and often are just hired for short durations They go in and out and are impossible to monitor Some of them work at one spot for just a month before moving on to greener pastures with more pay They also have something called an MTL card that gives them this easy access to various facilitiesrdquo he addsOur experience of walking around undetected at Sion Hospital See lsquoWe walk into a civic hospital unchecked no questions askedrsquo didnrsquot seem to surprise Devdas ldquoA few months ago nurses at Sion Hospital had complained after a man was found taking photographs and videos of them in the changing room In another hospital a camera was kept in the womenrsquos toilet so the women couldnrsquot even relieve themselves in peacerdquo he says adding that many of these incidents can be traced back to security lapses that result from hiring temp workers in such large volumes making verification close to impossibleIn 2019 Sion Hospital saw a case where a critical patientrsquos sister was taken to the roof and raped by someone posing as a ward boyPrakash Devdas is a lawyer who has been fighting to improve the conditions of health workers for over three decades PicKirti Surve ParadeEven 50 years later the brutal rape and assault of nurse Aruna Shanbaug by a ward boy in KEM Hospital in 1973 has not faded from Mumbaikarsrsquo memory So vicious was the attack that she was left in a vegetative state for 42 years resulting in the one of the longest medicolegal cases for euthanasia in the country In 2015 she died of pneumonia in her hospital bed By then her assailant Sohanlal Walmikimdashwho was merely charged with robberymdashhad already walked free after a sevenyear prison termldquoThe state is not hiring skilled labour Contract labour is cheaper but they have no unions or ways to address issues like workplace safety So a job with these conditions will attract a certain kind of crowdrdquo says Devdas pointing out that the starting salary for a nurse is 5 lakh per annum along with amenities like health discount and overtime Contractual help on the other hand are paid 8000 to 9000 per monthWith the authorities dragging their feet on recruitment of permanent staff due to red tape and a lack of funds hospitals across the state have begun to hire on contractual basis explains Dr Pratik Debaje president of the Maharashtra State Association of Residential Doctors CentralMARD ldquoIt is a fact that the state has not shown any interest to fill up vacancies across the board be it doctors nurses or class IV employees This is why we are seeing a lot of contractual workers being hired Instead that money should be used to recruit more payroll employeesrdquo he saysMTL staffers are leased out to hospitals by private companies says Debaje adding that he is unsure what qualifications the temp workers hold ldquoWe tend to rely more on the class IV employees who are on the statersquos payroll because they know the system and undergo training when they joinrdquo he addsSion Hospital Dean Dr Mohan Joshi says that hiring MTL workers is a common practice and is prevalent in corporate hospitals too ldquoThere is nothing wrong with the practice in itself We also make sure that all the MTL workers undergo police verification whether they are hired via a private company or an NGO Verification is a must for usrdquo he says adding that there are 414 MTL working in Sion Hospital aloneMany resident doctors both men and women who want to change things are now out protesting on the streets of Mumbai One such doctor tells midday that even male doctors are worried about the safety of their women colleagues on night duty because of how easy it is for anyone to walk into a hospital and go wherever they like ldquoMy colleagues and I are in our third year of residency and we spend all day together Can you imagine what it feels like to fear that something like this can happen to themrdquo he saysInputs by Eshan Kalyanikar3000No of contract staff hired across cityrsquos govtrun hospitals4037 more women work at night nowAs more women enter the night workforce ensuring their safety is the need of the hourThe discourse around safety has grown all the more important as women enter the night workforce in greater numbers across industriesThis year alone till July the Gujarat government received 79 applications from top corporates to allow to women to work at night In March Amazon and Zomato started hiring women for night shifts In 2019 Bharat Petroleum hired 11 women engineers as night shift managersmdasha first for the industry The company changed statutory norms and brought about operational reforms to ensure the safety of the women officers Closer home in 2015 Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had famously amended the Factories Act to let women work in night shifts In Goa too a power plant fought for permission for women to work late nightWith a wave of industrial and safety reforms 40 per cent more women work at night nowThe need of the hour is to frame regulations to ensure the safety of these women at such late hours both at work and during their commute to and from the workplaceMeanwhile amid the furore over the Kolkata rapemurder some netizens have also gone on to question why the doctor was not more careful about the place she had chosen to rest the hospital seminar hall during her night duty Activists have countered that women should be free and safe to rest wherever they wish whether itrsquos at their workplace or in a parkNeha Singh an activist and an author based in Versova says conversations like this led to her starting the ldquoWhy Loiterrdquo campaign which aims to reclaim public spaces in the city for women and challenge patriarchal societal normsldquoIn 2014 a woman was raped when she fell asleep in her Uber in Delhi after meeting up with her friends The conversation is not about why women have to be so hyper vigilant and even how catching a nap anywhere becomes a responsibility of the women and not a policing issuerdquo she saysSister Gracy Quadros retired has been working with Prakash Devdas president of the Municipal Health Service Employees Association to ensure the rights of nurses in the city for more than 30 years She recalls her years working in a BMC hospital ldquoWhen a nurse wanted to sleep for a bit during her break we would tell her to sleep on the stretchers or a vacant space in the ward itself We didnrsquot let them go to the designated resting room because there was no one who could watch who was going in and out of that room We were so hypervigilant that if a nurse had not been seen for more than two hours someone would go out searching for her The only security we had was each otherrdquoWe ask Singh about the dichotomy between wanting women to join and expand the workforce and the resistance to providing a conducive work environment ldquoExactly They want more people in the workplace but also refuse to build infrastructure to support it Or they gripe that hiring more women for night shifts entails more expenditure on security whilst completely ignoring the higher payoff Studies have shown that women are better managers making the workplace more productive and stressfreerdquo she says