No medical cover for employees!
Anwar Jamal, the delivery attendant of a frozen food company Menu (Ready to Eat & Cook Chicken Food Recipe Products) has been battling for life for nearly ten days after the company’s truck he was riding met a fatal accident on Nov 14. The driver of the vehicle was also injured but has recovered, however, 56-yearold Anwar Jamal is in comma and according to doctors his condition is serious.
Strangely, the company despite its repute and booming business across the country has failed to show magnanimity the family members of Anwar Jamal were expecting. On the contrary, it has almost disowned him saying the company doesn’t provide medical cover to its employees.
The contract he signed with the company 15 years ago doesn’t include medical treatment, a supervisor Tanveer told Anwar Jamal’s family.
Anwar, father of two daughters and a college-going son, is in coma and his children are running from pillar to post for his proper treatment and to bring him back to consciousness.
Marium Jamal, daughter of Anwar while talking to Pakistan Observer on Saturday expressed her surprise how a successful food company can ignore a loyal employee who has been on its payroll for the last fifteen years and has done his utmost all this while to earn profits for the employer. Even on the day of accident, he was not going for some personal errand rather he was in the company’s truck delivering company’s goods, she said.
While narrating the sorrowful tale of her father’s accident Marium said her father was sitting on the window-side seat close to the driver when the driver lost the control of the truck. It was daytime and they were coming from delivering the food items in E-11, she said. My father had severe head injuries and was rushed to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). There at the hospital, the doctors described him serious and told her that it was internal head injury. His oxygen level was dangerously low. The hospital lacked oxygen and they had to shift Anwar Jamal from PIMS to Kulsoom International Hospital and bore the expenses of ventilator and other services. “During the first few days, we didn’t receive any visit from higher management of the company and when after my insistence Mr Asad a senior officer (head North) did visit and consoled with the family,” said she. Mr Asad told them that the company could provide only PKR 50,000 and that too as goodwill gesture otherwise there was no provision of medical cover for employees, narrated Marium. It may be mentioned here that in private hospitals daily rate for keeping the patient on ventilator is around PKR100,000.
Marium is a housewife and she and her husband hardly managed the money for keeping Anwar Jamal in the private hospital for four days. After four days all their savings exhausted yet they instead of bringing Anwar Jamal home shifted him to another private hospital, Rawal Hospital though with lesser rates.
Marium said it was strange that a booming businesslike her father’s company doesn’t offer medical cover to its employees. “It is not the question of my father, it is rather a collective issue and all such companies which are negligent towards their workers’ welfare should be held accountable,” she said.
Mr Asad was asked to give his viewpoint but he said the matter didn’t directly relate with him as he dealt in sales matters. When asked in that case why he visited Anwar Jamal at the hospital, he replied that it was because he was an employee of the company.
Anwar is still in coma, still in the hospital. For the food company, business is as usual as they have hired another delivery attendant and are quite forgetful of the life-and-death condition of their ‘ex-employee.’
