Outsourced security guards, janitors at JPMC to get minimum wage: Dr Seemin Jamali

The administration of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) Karachi has decided to revise the tenders of private security and janitorial firms to ensure that private security guards and janitors are paid minimum wage of Rs17,500 fixed by the government of Pakistan.

“After learning that private contractors are not paying the minimum wage of Rs17,500 to security guards and janitors, we have decided to revise the tender’s terms and conditions for hiring the outsource services. From next month, the hiring firm would be bound to pay the minimum wage fixed by the government to their employees working at JPMC,” said Dr Seemin Jamali, the JPMC executive director, while talking to The News on Monday.

The decision to revise the terms and conditions in the tenders by the JPMC administration was taken after social workers pointed out that hundreds of private security guards and janitors hired by private security and janitorial firms were being paid far less than minimum wage fixed by the government.

“After interviews and a little investigation, it emerged that security guards posted at the JPMC are being paid Rs12,000 to Rs14,000 by their employers. The security firms quote Rs17,500 as the minimum wage to be paid to private security guards but they never pay this amount to these guards,” said Naeem Sadiq, a social worker and rights activist.

He added that the janitors hired by janitorial firms were also not paid the minimum wages fixed by the government and depending on the job needs, they were being paid between Rs8,000 and Rs12,000, in blatant violation of rules.

He maintained that once security guards and janitors at JPMC were paid the minimum wages, he would approach other public hospitals’ administrations including the National Institute of Child Health (NICH), National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD), Civil Hospital Karachi and other public health facilities for doing the same.

“We raised this issue with the administrations of cantonment boards and also approached courts for implementation on the minimum wage law. Now some cantonment boards have started paying the minimum wage to their employees while JPMC has vowed to implement this law from October 2020,” he said.