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A baby boy is born and it costs the family Rs 500 to catch a glimpse. For a girl child though, the rate is only 200. The OT technicians and orderlies only give the child after they receive the bribe. "My wife gave birth to a boy yesterday. The orderlies in the theatre kept him ransom for 20 minutes after we tried to give them Rs 200. In the end I was forced to give 500 and then saw my child," says Ajaz Ahmad, an employee in the state forest department. "I couldn't do anything because they had my child. I was afraid that they might change him."
There are, in fact, separate rates for cutting the child's placenta. The orderlies charge 150 for it.
A change of patient's bed sheet costs them 50 rupees. For a change of panties of the patient after delivery, the orderlies demand Rs 100.
For every dressing, the attendants have to pay Rs 100.
And when the patient is finally discharged from the hospital, the orderlies stop them till each orderly gets a 100 rupee note.
In Ward no 118, 203, 318, and 218 the patients name Phaata, Moghli and Rafiqa, Jameela Zareena, Jana and Azi as the most corrupt orderlies who don't even touch the patients without demanding money for it.
"If we deny them money, they tell the other orderlies and no one looks after our patient. We are so worried about our patient that we do not complain," says Shameema Akhtar, an attendant from Eidgah area. "They (staff) peel off our skin and we can't do anything because we are at their mercy here."
The orderlies frolic around the wards looking for money. In ward 318, a patient from Pulwama, lying on her bed, wants an underwear change, two orderlies rush for help, their hands fiddle under the quilt and the moment they get their hands out, one of them demands Rs 100 from the mother of the girl. She hands it over meekly. Two female doctors walk around the bed to check the glucose drip of a patient three beds away. "Get up; let's get another 50 out of her husband," one orderly says to another and they rush out together catching hold of the husband in the corridor.
In the Jammu Kashmir Medical Employees Federation (JKMEF) office at the far end of the corridor, the Unit President, Sheikh Abdul Majeed, lights a Four Square cigarette. Majeed has been working in Lal Ded Hospital for 22 years since 1986. He has been the unit president of Lal Ded for 17 years since 1992. "We want people to come and tell us that someone is asking them for bribe and we will take action. No one approaches us," says Majeed. "Why should we go in the wards on our own for checks? It is patients and attendants who lie about it most of the time."
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