Stung by fall-out after it sacked contract staff, BMC decides to use its enrolled medical workforce in future
The BMC has created six wards in the NESCO exhibition hall and installed 1500 beds, including 700 oxygen beds. Pic/Satej Shinde
Despite the chaos that broke out at the NESCO Jumbo centre at Goregaon with contractual employees protesting recently as they were rendered jobless after a year, the BMC plans to use its medical students and staff across all the jumbo centres. While the city is seeing a dip in the active Covid-19 cases with 90 per cent of the beds in hospitals vacant, the civic body is planning in advance to ensure there is no shortage of manpower if required.
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The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) also plans to outsource the maintenance of ICUs and oxygenated beds, but only as a last resort to private agencies or NGOs.
While the contractors will be selected, the work order (actual jobs and contract) will be given only if the need arises to activate the huge infrastructure prepared to tackle the possible third wave. Officials said that selecting contractors in advance will only mean having additional resources ready at the nth hour instead of worrying about the problems at the end.
A senior civic official said, “Selection of an eligible agency in advance will be helpful. But we will not be spending money on them from now. We will award them the contract only if the need arises and till then we will use our medical students and staff to the full potential. We will look at an option of contractual employees in case there is an urgent need. We will appoint as a last resort an agency to which the beds of ICUs, oxygenated beds will be outsourced.”
The civic body will also keep some units in the jumbo centers under lock and key and will activate them when the need arises.
The civic body has not started admitting patients to the new jumbo centres that were inaugurated recently, as the case load in the city is currently very minimal.
There are over 20K beds that are currently vacant across various hospitals and Covid care facilities, and these do not include the new centre at Malad.
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