New Delhi: A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India on Tuesday expressed its strong reservation on West Bengal government’s ‘Rattirer Sathi’ – ‘Companion of night’ – scheme to address workplace safety for women doctors and healthcare staff in hospitals.
What did the apex court say?
During the hearing on a suo motu case in the Kolkata doctor rape and murder case, the Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra said, “Given the backdrop of the crime committed at RG Kar hospital where a contractual civic volunteer alleged committed the crime, we will have a situation where another set of contractual people trained for 7 days will be in hospitals, having access to all areas. the whole problem is when you entrust security to contractual staff, there is no protection for women doctors, there are genuine reservations as to who are these people of contractual nature are.”
Under the scheme ‘Rattirer Sathi’ scheme, the state government plans to engage services of 1541 private persons to provide security at medical colleges and hospitals.
“Here we are dealing with the safety and security of young girls between 18 years to 23 years, they are almost like children, they are young students, they are straight out of homes, we have to assuage their concerns and their parents,” added the Chief Justice of India.
Hospital and medical colleges must be manned by regular police and not contractual security staff, apex court told West Bengal
The Chief Justice of India also told the West Bengal government that hospital and medical colleges must be manned by regular police and not contractual security staff.
The court also said the accused who committed the crime was a civic volunteer. “If we have another set of contractual people. Now you want to replace these volunteers with another set of contractual staff. women docs will have concerns about security if they are not police,” the court said.
The court also directed the West Bengal government to re-look at the scheme and ensure that at least 45 government medical colleges and hospitals are manned by regular police and access to rest rooms, duty rooms is protected by biometric access, so that unauthorised people do not access the doctors rooms.