They have been hailed India’s COVID-19 “heroes,” but doctors, nurses, delivery drivers and other front-line workers have been attacked and in some cases evicted from their homes.
Some e-commerce giants have even halted deliveries partly due to the harassment of staff, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that abuse of hospital workers had become a “huge issue.”
Reports of attacks and abuse have come from across India, increasing with the imposition this week of a nationwide lockdown.
In at least one case, police were accused of beating a delivery driver carrying medicines.
Sanjibani Panigrahi, a doctor in the western city of Surat, described how she was accosted as she returned home from a long day at a hospital that is treating COVID-19 patients.
She said that neighbors blocked her at the entrance to her apartment building and threatened “consequences” if she continued to work.
“These are the same people who have happily interacted with me [in the past]. Whenever they’ve faced a problem, I’ve helped them out,” the 36-year-old said. “There is a sense of fear among people. I do understand, but it’s like I suddenly became an untouchable.”
Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences earlier this week appealed to the government for help after health workers were forced out of their homes by panicked landlords and housing societies.
“Many doctors are stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country,” the letter said.
Modi called on Indians to stop treating medical workers as pariahs, describing those fighting the coronavirus as “god-like.”
“Today, they are the people who are saving us from dying, putting their lives in danger,” he said.
Health workers are not the only ones facing the brunt of the frightened population in an environment where misinformation and rumors are thriving.
Airline and airport staff, who are still being called on for evacuations of Indians stuck overseas and management of key cargo deliveries, have also been threatened.
Indian airlines have condemned threats made against their staff.
An Air India flight attendant said that her neighbors threatened to evict her from her apartment while she was heading to the US, saying she would “infect everyone.”
“I couldn’t sleep that night,” she said, afraid to reveal her name over fear of further stigmatization. “I was scared that even if I did go home, would someone break open the door or call people to kick me out?”
Her husband had to ask the police for help.
Others have not been as lucky, the flight attendant said, with one colleague — who declined to speak — forced out of her home and now living with her parents.
“With all the fake news and WhatsApp forwards, they don’t know what is going on, so there’s this paranoia that makes them behave like this,” she said.
Indian Commercial Pilots Association general secretary T. Praveen Keerthi said that the association had received more than 50 complaints.
“Airline staffers are being stopped from entering their own residential premises by security guards,” Keerthi said. “We also have families and children that we leave at home to help fellow citizens... The least we expect is for our colleagues to not be harassed and ostracized.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS