The Hospital Never Closes. The Argument About Paying Its Staff Apparently Does
J&K wants round-the-clock public healthcare. It has not yet decided whether it wants to pay round-the-clock for the people who deliver itJ&K wants round-the-clock public healthcare. It has not yet decided whether it wants to pay round-the-clock for the people who deliver it
The hospital does not shut down at 5 pm. Neither do emergencies, infections, admissions or the quiet breakdowns that keep a public health system honest. Yet the question before Jammu and Kashmir is still embarrassingly basic: if the state expects round-the-clock service, why does it hesitate over round-the-clock compensation for the staff who make that service possible? A high-level committee in the Health and Medical Education Department has reportedly submitted its views on additional pay for non-gazetted staff working Sundays and public holidays. The detail may sound administrative. It is not. It goes to the heart of how public institutions value labour that is invisible only to those who never stand inside a ward at midnight. The reported split inside the committee is revealing. One side appears to favour a wider benefit for frontline health workers. Another warns against open-ended fiscal commitments. That is not merely a dispute over rupees. It is a test of whether healthcare is treated as a continuous public duty or a weekday arrangement dressed up as reform. The people in question are not ceremonial employees. They are nurses, laboratory technicians, records staff, sanitation workers and support personnel who keep the machinery running when offices are shut, and official calendars go blank. They are the operational layer of public medicine. Remove them from a Sunday shift, and the system begins to creak, then stall, then embarrass everyone who praised it at launch time. The deeper failure is structural. Governments demand permanent availability but often budget as if labour arrives only during office hours. That mismatch breeds resentment, then fatigue, then attrition. The most capable staff start looking elsewhere, usually into the private sector, where overtime is not described as charity. This is where the state must ask itself a harder question. Is essential service merely a slogan, or is it a contract with the people who sustain it? If the answer is serious, then compensation cannot be treated as an awkward afterthought. It must be part of the design. A committee report should not become another file that gathers dust while the problem grows teeth. The issue is simple. Pay the staff who keep the hospital alive when the rest of the system is sleeping. Anything less is not prudence. It is an administrative denial. Every single weekend.
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