The Delhi High Court recently ordered the Delhi government to make sure that the employees of Maharishi Valmiki Hospital receive their wages by February 8 after observing the ‘sorry state of affairs’.
A single judge bench of Justice Rekha Palli directed the AAP government to clear the salaries of the hospital workers in an interim order while hearing a plea filed by nine men, working as nursing orderlies at the Delhi government-run Maharishi Valmiki Hospital. The petitioners informed the court in their plea that they have not been paid wages since April 12 last year.
The workmen’s current petitions “depict a very sorry state of affairs, where they have not been paid any wages since April 12, 2022, only due to the files moving back and forth between two departments of the Govt. of NCT of Delhi,” the High Court stated in its order dated January 24.
The workers’ counsel asserted that they were forced to move to the High Court since the Labour Court had “adjourned the matter at the hospital’s repeated requests” instead of ordering the hospital to pay their wages.
When Justice Palli scheduled the case for hearing on February 8, she issued a warning that the Delhi Government’s secretary of finance “will remain present in court” if the workers’ wages were not paid by the next hearing date.
