The issue has triggered a row on social media, following the letter issued by Kerala House denying shelter to nurses on COVID-19 duty in Delhi.
The Kerala House in Delhi has sparked a fresh row after refusing to provide quarantine facilities in its premises to Malayali nurses on COVID-19 duty in the city. The request was made by Indian Professional Nurses Association (IPNA), after reports of many Malayali nurses in Mumbai and Delhi hospitals testing positive for COVID-19. In a written response to the Indian Professional Nurses Association (IPNA), which made the request, Kerala House’s Resident Commissioner, Sanjay Garg IAS, had said that the house was functioning on ‘bare minimum staff’, and hence could not accommodate the request to offer quarantine facilities to nurses. “As you are aware, due to the Ministry of Home Affairs directive on lockdown, metro services and public transportation systems are not in operation. Hence most of our staff is unable to attend duty,” the letter read. Further, stating that the number of staff in “housekeeping and hospitality at Kerala House is skeletal and that the canteen has been shut for a month now with all the daily wage staff sent back home”, the letter stated that it would be difficult to carry out the IPNA’s request at this time. However, members of the IPNA have now reacted to Kerala House’s prompt denial, calling it ‘unexpected and disastrous’. “We made a very specific request to authorities at Kerala House. There are nurses here who carry out duties in COVID-19 wards for a stipulated period laid down by the hospital. As per the World Health Organisation’s guidelines, health workers on COVID-19 duty have to go on post-duty quarantine for a week at least. There are many nurses who have elderly parents and children at home and hence cannot quarantine themselves at home. There are also nurses living in hostels. These people need our help and this response was unexpected and disastrous. It’s the first time that we have received such a blunt response from Kerala House,” Vipin Krishnan, national committee member of the IPNA, told TNM. “We were disappointed by the government’s response because within 24 hours, officials of the Kerala House responded to us in the negative without even trying to resolve the issues faced by these nurses,” he added. IPNA’s letter also requested Kerala House to arrange transport facilities for these nurses to and from their work places. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in multiple press meets, had also spoken about the need to support and extend help to Malayali healthcare workers in other states who are frontline workers. The nurses’ association has also written to Dr A Sampath, special representative at Kerala House; former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy; and even to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, and are yet to hear from them. Meanwhile, the issue has also been politicised in Kerala, with Pinarayi's detractors comparing this incident to when Kerala House had given shelter to students of Jamia Millia Islamia University who were stranded following anti-CAA protest-related violence. Read: From lack of PPE to discrimination: Nurses working in Delhi hospitals on official apathy ‘We’re getting low-quality PPE, masks’: Kerala govt medical officers write to CM Watch:
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