Healthcare protests

Healthcare workers demand the government to reinstate the health risk allowance and better their working conditions

For the past week, healthcare workers with the help of the Grand Health Alliance have been protesting on the streets of Karachi after the Sindh government decided to permanently withdraw the health risk allowance from their salaries. They only demand of the government to reinstate the health risk allowance and better their working conditions. The failure of the Sindh government to reach out to these protesters in hopes of a peaceful resolution has had a crippling effect on transport routes in the busiest financial hub of the country.

Over the week, the protest has significantly gained momentum and spread to other cities of the province, prompting LEAs to cordon off areas and block key routes. This in turn has forced commenters to throng alternative routes, resulting in severe traffic jams across major part of the city. The huge workforce that the city hosts is suffocating under such conditions. A lack of responsibility and discipline has been maintained by both the Sindh government and the healthcare sector. The government was seen resorting to force — protestors were manhandled and the Karachi police used water guns while detaining 25 of them in the process — to undermine their lack of responsibility in holding talks and mediating with enraged workers. This is because the state and citizens have long had a strained and precarious relationship, whereby the state believes that its only duty it is to enforce its writ onto “belligerent” citizens rather than helping or serving them. But there is also the other side of the coin.

While healthcare workers are in their right to protest, they must ensure, because of their profession, that emergency wards, operation theatres and OPDs are functional. Even though the right to protest is a given, it comes with certain conditions. Here, however, the onus lies on government officials to initiate a dialogue and resolve any pending grievances. Force can never be used as the first step.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2022.

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