TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The union of 108 ambulance employees has claimed that 12 ambulances procured for the service still remain unused.
Union members claim the ambulances that arrived a month ago are still not on the road with the management saying the machinery and equipment required for the van were missing.
The union had in February raised the issue of insufficient number of ambulances and bad working conditions of workers and had even resorted to a chain hunger strike in protest. After months of protests, the intervention of a core committee comprising the Health Minister along with MLAs Nilesh Cabral, Subhash Faldesai and Siddharth Kuncolienkar, saw members return to work but as of now they said none of their demands have been met.
“The 12 new vehicles are till date off the road and there are not more than 25 ambulances on the road. The government should now look into the matter and seriously think about cancelling the contract with GVK. The contract was to run ambulances at all 33 locations,” said Hrydaynath Shirodkar, president of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh.
Among the list of other demands, Sagar Prabhudesai, general secretary of the union said there has been no review of salaries and the harassment continues.
“We’ve been told that if salaries were to be increased for us, they would have to do so for the rest of the States since it was an all India service. That is not our issue. Harassment continues to occur especially to the union leaders,” he said.
