After serving patients during pandemic, Covid warriors in Kolkata stare at uncertain future – Times of India

A group of 680-odd Covid-infected migrant labourers who were trained as Covid warriors and were employed as volunteers at city government hospitals last year to work as attendants with a fixed stipend, have been asked to go back home from next month, staring at a bleak future.

KOLKATA: A group of 680-odd Covid-infected migrant labourers who were trained as Covid warriors and were employed as volunteers at city government hospitals last year to work as attendants with a fixed stipend, have been asked to go back home from next month, staring at a bleak future.
Around 20 of them deployed at the KPC Medical College and Kolkata Medical College and Hospital have already been sent back home while for the rest, the contract ends on March 31, as many hospitals, dedicated to Covid patients, are shedding such a tag.
“When the Covid infection was at its peak, we were deployed by the government to handle patients at Covid wards where even doctors and nurses maintained safe distance. But now as the infection numbers are decreasing in our state, we have been asked to go. This is not fair,” said Bapon Dewan, currently working at MR Bangur Hospital, which is also set to admit non-Covid patients from next week, shedding the tag of being the state’s biggest dedicated Covid hospital.
On July 8 last year, TOI had reported how a group of 29 migrant workers — including Murshidabad resident Dewan who used to work at a hotel in Mumbai prior to the nationwide lockdown — had joined the state hospital as the first batch of Covid warriors. The number had slowly increased to 681 over the next few weeks.
“My job involved changing adult diapers, helping elderly patients to the washroom and even checking their health parameters. I don’t know what to do now. I am the main breadwinner of my family,” said Mahajul Mia, a resident of Dinhata who was deployed at Kolkata Medical College and Hospital since August last year.
Upon joining, the state government had been paying a such Covid warrior a stipend of Rs. 15,000 per month, which, some of them like Kuddus Ali claimed, hasn’t come since February. Additionally, majority of the such warriors haven’t even received a vaccine shot.
“The covid warriors were all on contract and had regularly got their stipends. Although there is a second wave in some parts of the country, Covid-19 cases are on a decline here. Hence, we don’t need so many of them at present,” said a health department official.
Staring at an uncertain future, some of them even staged a protest outside the Sasthya Bhavan. “It would have been a nice gesture on part of the government if these warriors could have been absorbed in their current job,” said Amarendra Roy, an orthopaedic surgeon in Murshidabad who was the brain behind the formation of the Covid warriors club.