Resident doctors and staff members of the North Corporation run Hindu Rao Hospital on Wednesday protested over non-payment of their due salaries for the last three months and went on a symbolic indefinite strike.
Hundreds of doctors and nurses of the hospital held placards and raised slogans demanding their due salaries, at the main gate of the facility.
Doctors claimed that they have not been paid since June. Last week, the staffers were on a 'Pen Down Strike' from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. to display their ordeal.
However, the civic body officials said that the matter is being looked into.
Hindu Rao Hospital is the largest municipal hospital in Delhi with 900 beds, and is currently a dedicated COVID-19 facility. Many of its healthcare workers had contracted the infection earlier. Since, it is a dedicated coronavirus facility, the "services will not be essentially affected".
Abhimanyu Sardana, president of the Resident Doctors Association said "We are on a symbolic indefinite strike to make our voices heard to authorities, who have not responded to our appeal so far. We have been doing the symbolic pen down from 9 am to 12 noon, for the last several days, as well as online protests, but no one listened to us.
So, the protest took place and doctors who are not on COVID-19 rotational duty joined, he said.
"We are humans too and have a family to run. We are risking our lives for humanity in this pandemic. Is it too much to ask for our due salaries," Sardana said.
North Delhi Mayor Jai Prakash had recently said, "We are doing everything possible to resolve the issue".
The doctors and other staff members of the corporation has not been paid for months resulted in repeated protests. Besides Hindu Rao hospital, doctors and nurses of other hospitals run by the corporation like Maharishi Valmiki Infectious Diseases, Kasturba Hospital, Girdhari Lal Maternity Hospital and Rajan Babu Institute of Pulmonary Medicine and Tuberculosis have also been protesting over the issue of non-payment of salary.