The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

All employees, including doctors and nurses, of Bangladesh origin in Apollo Hospital yesterday went on a sit-in strike demanding resignation of its Chief Executive and withdrawal of termination order against its 150 staffs immediately, seriously disrupting medical services and leaving the patients at bay.

Justifying their demands, the striking doctors and staffs said the hospital authorities terminated their 150 colleagues to create room for recruiting more foreigners.

The Apollo Hospital, situated at Baridhara, has the highest number of foreign staffs, including doctors and nurses, among the private hospitals in the capital.

During the daylong demonstrations, the Medicare systems of the hospital collapsed, putting 142 patients, now admitted into the hospital, into suffering as they did not get the support from its attending physicians who expressed their solidarity with the strikers.

Staff nurse Shafiqul Islam (not his real name) said that they are on strike as the hospital authorities are terminating jobs one after another without assigning any cause. He further alleged that they called in and asked staff members-at a time-to resign without following the Labour law.

They (hospital authorities) have so far sacked a total of 150 employees, including doctors and nurses, out of the around 1,400-member-strong staff since January in the same way. They (authorities) must give its employees prior notice and advance salaries for the next 90 days as per the Labour law if they want to terminate anyone's job," he said.

Later, police and RAB men rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.

The demonstrators went back home at about 5.00pm, saying that their demonstrations would also continue today.

Refuting the demonstrators' allegations, media officer of the foreign-local partnership hospital Giasuddin Ahmed, also former joint secretary of the Home Ministry, said, "Everything is being done under the existing Labour law 2006 of the country. If anyone claims otherwise, then we have nothing to do."

About reason for the job cuts, he said the hospital has some 1,400 employees though it needs over 800 to operate the hospital smoothly.

"Thinking about their future, the hospital has decided to retain 1,050 of the staff members, which is much more than our need, that is, over 800 employees. And the rest are to be terminated following the Labour Act."

He also alleged that they had failed repeatedly to convince the staff to go for a negotiated solution.