THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Terming the nurses issue as not a labour matter, the IMA Hospital Board has taken serious exception to Labour Minister Shibu Baby John’s statement on the formation of Industrial Relations Committee and yet another Minimum Wages Award in June 2012 for private hospital employees."The nurses issue is just a symptom of what is ailing the private healthcare system. By addressing it as a labour issue, the government is committing a blunder,” they said in a statement here on Wednesday.The IMA Hospital Board has said that nurses are only one section of the hospital employees and that there can be no justification for another salary revision for all the employees when a Minimum Wages Award had been proclaimed in 2009.“If the government is of the opinion that such conditions prevail in the state so as to revise salaries within a short span of three years, it should do so across sectors wherever Minimum Wages Act is applicable. The responsibility for allowing such a situation to develop would also lie squarely with the government,” they said.They alleged that it was the failure of the Balaraman Committee to understand the nature and dynamics of private healthcare sector that resulted in the lopsided and short-sighted report.The IMA repeated the argument that clinics and small hospitals would vanish if the recommendations of the report are implemented. Those hospitals that manage to survive would do so at the cost of the patients. “There is an urgent need to address the situation,” they said.The IMA also opined that the unemployment crisis faced by the nurses also has to be addressed. They suggested that capitation system in nursing education should be banned and easy educational loans be made available to nursing students.The IMA went a step further and said that like the farm loans, the bank loan liability of graduated nurses should also be waived.
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