Govt must keep its promise
Right after the coronavirus pandemic started, many healthcare professionals, mostly from public hospitals, started to live at different hotels to protect their families from possible Covid-19 infections. Later, the government turned some of its training centres into accommodation facilities for Covid-19 healthcare providers and also, declared that those who will not be able to avail these facilities will start receiving daily allowances to cover their additional living costs from July 1, 2020. Unfortunately, a report published by The Daily Star on April 8, 2021 shows that the majority of the public healthcare workers, who have been battling the deadly virus from the frontlines, are yet to receive their due incentives.
According to the Covid-19 guidelines, healthcare providers will have to treat their patients for 15 days a month and then remain in quarantine for the next 15 days. Keeping this in mind, the government issued a circular stating that doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff in the capital’s public hospitals will receive Tk 2,000, Tk 1,200 and Tk 800, respectively, as daily allowances for the period during which they will stay in quarantine, while the doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff working outside of Dhaka will receive Tk 1,800, Tk 1,000 and Tk 650, respectively. While the total number of healthcare professionals providing Covid-19 treatment at public hospitals across the country is at 23,285 (according to a DS report on November 29, 2020), the aforementioned report mentions that only 1,800 of them from 14 hospitals are receiving the monetary assistance at this moment.
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We urge the government to uphold its promise to the frontline medical practitioners in the battle against Covid-19 and to make sure that the incentives reach all of them as soon as possible. With the ongoing surge in both infection and death rates, keeping up the morale of the healthcare professionals is essential, and these incentives will definitely help in doing that.
