Covid-19: Mumbai civic body to hire over 600 health workers

MUMBAI: Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Mumbai's civic body, will hire nearly 600 healthcare workers over the next week to deal with the manpower crunch at public health facilities, said a senior official at the BMC.

Maharashtra on Thursday became the first state in the country to have reported over 3,000 coronavirus cases, including 1,863 in Mumbai. The state now has a total of 3,081 infected patients, according to the state's health department.

“We have an immediate requirement for nearly 600 healthcare workers and it will take us around a week or so to finalise their recruitments,” said Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner at BMC.

“We have a waiting list of applicants for the posts of nurses, drivers and ward boys, and are looking to hire the maximum number of people from that list. We have also issued a public notice inviting applications for these posts, but those will be considered only once the waiting list gets exhausted. With the number of public applications that are there, it will definitely take us a longer time to recruit them as we will have to conduct written examinations to scrutinise the open market applicants,” he added.

Kakani could not confirm the number of public applications BMC had received for these posts.

The city faces manpower shortage at its hospitals as the number of covid-19 cases have been on the rise. The situation has led Maharashtra Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to appeal for participation from retired army personnel, with any experience of health care to join the administration’s containment efforts.

“Right now, we have a vacancy for 275 nurses and we are expecting that close to 200 would join from the waiting list. But if we are not able to match our requirement from the waiting list, then the open market quota will go up. We also need at least 70 drivers and 150 ward boys,” said Kakani.

Today, Maharashtra reported fresh 165 coronavirus cases, of which 107 are from Mumbai and 19 from Pune, according to the state's health department. So far, Mumbai has the highest number of covid-19 cases at 987 in the state.

With the number of covid-19 cases rising, BMC has also expedited its process to hire doctors. “For doctors, the process of hiring is always on and it just requires them to submit an application, then we conduct an interview and hire them. There is a shortage of doctors everywhere and we keep issuing notices to invite interested volunteers,” said Kakani.

India has so far reported a total of 12,380 cases, of which 941 were confirmed in the past 24 hours, according to data from the health ministry. The deadly virus has so far left 414 dead. The Indian Council of Medical Research on Wednesday said it has tested 2,74,599 samples.