Letters to the Editor: June 7

Delhi Golf Club

The report in The Indian Express on June 1 said that Delhi Golf Club had shut down its Food & Beverages section, rendering 60 employees jobless. The club management was quoted as saying that the wage bill was already very high and the club was spending Rs 60 to 65 lakhs per month on paying wages.

And since there had been no sale of food and beverages during the lockdown period, the club was unable to keep so many people on their rolls. Significantly, the news report also mentioned that if the lockdown and consequent absence of sale continued, the club would not be able to sustain beyond three or four years.

The club management sought to justify the retrenchment by citing the high wages that some of the employees were receiving. A cook at the club, the report said, was earning Rs 1.25 lakhs a month. An employee pointed out that the cook in question had served for 35 years in the club and that wages, revised every five years, had been fixed by the club itself.

The club needs to answer several questions. If it has the resources to weather three to four years of little or no sale, why is it retrenching employees at this critical time? Surely heavens would not have fallen if they had supported the employees for a year? Secondly, why couldn’t the club defer wage revision, requested the employees to take a 10% wage cut and increased membership subscription by 5%? Thirdly, like most clubs, Delhi Golf Club too will sooner or later open up and restart the food and beverages section by employing fresh staff at rock-bottom wages. Why is that fair?

Golf clubs in any case survive on public subsidies. Not only were they given a huge area of land at throw- away rates in a part of the city, which were the outskirts at one time but which is now bang in the middle of Delhi, it also guzzles water. The lease rent that it pays and the payment for water is a pittance.

With bureaucrats, rich businessmen and powerful politicians forming the core of its membership, the hypocrisy inherent in the decision to retrench employees at such critical times, was not expected. Or I may just be wrong. What else can one expect from this class of people?

An old Delhiwalla

Personal Protective Aequipment

As was widely anticipated, private hospitals in metro cities have hiked their rates. Frankly, I initially sympathised with their plight. The lockdown had hit them hard with most non-Covid patients choosing to stay back at home, fearing infections. In the absence of PPEs, doctors and para-medical staff too were reluctant to attend the hospitals, which were still saddled with high maintenance costs, interest payments etc.

All my sympathy, however, evaporated when I learnt that the hospitals were charging eight to ten thousand Rupees per day from non- Covid patients for the use of PPEs. A week-long stay in the hospital is now costing each patient Rs 70,000 for PPEs alone.

One understands that PPEs cannot be re-used (Is there anything in India which is not re-used?) and need to be changed daily. But why should non-Covid patients be forced to first wear a Hazmat suit, change it daily and pay for them? Why isn’t a simple mask enough for them? The PPEs one thought was meant for frontline medical care givers.

Can the National Herald on Sunday inform us of the protocol prescribed by WHO and our own health ministry? Please also inform why PPEs are so expensive, if they can be re-used after washing and sanitising them? And what steps have the government taken to ramp up the production of PPEs so as to lower their cost?

Ravi Kant Bhalla China: Modi ki Jooti, Modi ke Sar?

The reaction of both the Government and its blind support- ers to China occupying Indian land in Ladakh has been pathetic. Even Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has underplayed the occupation. China, he told a TV Channel, always intrud- ed into disputed territory but this time they have advanced a little more (thoda aage). PM Narendra Modi, who accused the then PM Dr Manmohan Singh of not being firm with China has maintained a studied silence. And patriotic Indians, who regularly go into a frenzy and call for a surgical strike against Pakistan, are busy extolling the virtues of quiet diploma- cy while calling for the boycott of Chinese financed apps like Tik Tok and PayTM.

In Hindi, they would have called it “Modi ki Jooti/ Modi ke Sar”.

Kuljit Bains