No phone no vacancy

Sanitary patrols in Pindi fired, restored over smartphone row 

It is impossible to imagine a life without a cell phone. A department in Rawalpindi took this commonly believed notion a bit too far and sacked its employees as they failed to produce a smartphone.

In a stunning move, the health authorities in Rawalpindi terminated the jobs of 78 sanitary patrols — working to control the spread of dengue — for not registering their smartphones with the department. But the story didn’t end there. All the employees were reinstated the very next day on compliance assurances, though official notification came four days later. These sanitary patrols were daily wagers of the Rawalpindi Health Department and most of them were women.

“Those 78 sanitary workers who had refused to register their android mobile phones for anti-dengue surveillance activities after repeated reminders are hereby terminated with immediate effect,” showed the termination notice issued on October 1.

The trade union activists of the department scrambled to pursue the case and the majority of sacked employees got their phones registered, hence the termination order got reversed.

The health department, via another notification, withdrew the previous office order and wrote that “on the appeal and assurance of sanitary patrols (daily wages) regarding registration of android mobile phones for dengue surveillance activities, the notification about termination from the services is withdrawn from the date of its issuance.” The workers were asked to continue their duties at their respective union councils as usual. The CEO Health Department Dr Ansar Ashfaq told Bol News that the condition was necessary to keep an eye on the ‘surveillance team’ controlling the spread of  dengue.

“We need to ensure that they are not sitting at home. The registration is mandatory to monitor their activities,” he said. “We have clear direction from the Punjab government that if workers do not register their phones with the department then they should not be hired,” Dr Ashfaq explained.

He said these workers have been hired for dengue season only and it has been made mandatory by the Punjab Government to get their android phones registered with the department. Around 4,000 sanitary patrols are deputed in the department to perform dengue surveillance and activities to curb the spread of dengue in Rawalpindi. Out of the total, only 1,500 employees are regular while the remaining are daily wage employees.

The Chairman of the Action Committee, Imam Khan stated that the daily wagers get low salaries which stand around Rs26,000 to Rs27,000. He said most of them could not afford to purchase or maintain a cell phone with this salary.

“When this job was advertised in the newspaper, it mentioned that carrying android mobile phones is mandatory for the applicants. But there are people, mostly girls, with impoverished backgrounds who can’t afford this expensive gadget,” he stated.

He lauded Dr Ashfaq for purchasing three smartphones for girls from his pocket. According to Imam Khan, the authorities in Lahore are responsible for this conditionality. He said employees are still bound to register their smartphones with the department so that they may keep the office updated with their day-to-day work and activities.

According to Imam, the health department sometime back had provided around 80 smartphones to vaccinators. Some 27 android phones were also handed over to the area in charge of the sanitary patrols.

Dr Ashfaq said there are 3,660 workers and most of them obliged the condition by registering their android mobile phones. He said these 78 workers were reluctant to do so and so they were terminated from their jobs.

Now, he said, so far 67 sacked workers have registered their mobile phones with the department and others have assured that they will do the same soon and so their jobs have been restored.

Responding to a query that these employees’ are too poor to afford a smartphone, he said, an android phone nowadays can be easily purchased for Rs 1,500. Meanwhile, dengue is spreading in Rawalpindi as 4,116 cases have already been reported so far from August till the filing of the report this year.

Last year 1,286 cases were reported of it in Rawalpindi whereas only 16 cases of it were reported in 2020. However, there was a massive outbreak of it in 2019 in which 5,103 cases of dengue were reported in Rawalpindi.

The local authorities are of the view that due to the early monsoon there has been an early outbreak of the disease.

According to the data provided by the Health Department to Bol News, there are a total of 163 dengue patients in the allied hospitals of the department as on October 25. These cases belong mostly to Rawalpindi and other cities like Abbottabad, Attock, Chakwal, Haripur, Islamabad etc.

According to the health department, three patients in critical condition are admitted to Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital.