The Goa Medical College (GMC) recently conducted a walk-in-interview to fill up 85 multi-task staff posts. Following this, about 1500 interviewees crowded outside the GMC, breaking all social distancing norms. The GMC authorities have come under fire for this lack of planning on their part.
The GMC has been expanding recently to battle COVID-19 and provide care to the affected patients. Hence, there has been a spike in the need of multi-task workers who are required to perform multiple tasks like patient care, odd jobs, or assist in non-technical aspects.
The GMC authorities were put under fire for not preparing for the task in advance. Since the pandemic, there has been mass unemployment, and that they should have expected people to show up in large numbers and should have planned for this.
“With so many applicants present, it was complete chaos and even security personnel were unable to maintain discipline,” said an eyewitness.
The health ministry was also blamed for this disregard of decorum saying it could be the reason for COVID-19 to spread even more and that the authorities should have made better arrangements to facilitate social distancing.
Many comments were made on the safety of the staff and the people present after a video clip of the interviewees shoving each other went viral.
Though a senior official of the Ministry said that they were also taken aback by the number of candidates as the response to their adverts had been poor.
“Total recruitments could not be done through posts were advertised more than once, as people feared working in a hospital despite the starting salary offered was Rs 18,000.”
The ad to fill up the multi-task post was put up about a month ago which received very poor response due to the pandemic, health minister Vishwajit Rane had also stated that it had become difficult to recruit for this post.
This has no doubt been poor planning on part of the GMC as they have been receiving huge numbers of applicants for their posts since 2018.
