Refusal of task by a General Worker - about leakage of water from a sewerage line at the hospital

Dear Seniors, we are in receipt of a complaint against a general worker in the admin department of the hospital who was also provided with room accommodation for a night stay at the hospital. He was informed by the night administrator regarding an incident on 14 March about leakage of water from the sewerage line on the 2nd-floor patient ward area of the hospital. But he immediately refused to attend to the complaint and told him that it was not his job to perform.

Being the general worker at the hospital with night accommodation at the hospital, he was supposed to perform the required tasks and solve the problem. Please respond to the above query: was the worker's refusal justified? And what action can be taken against the worker? The admin dept is no more in the mood to keep the worker after this incident. Your expert views are requested. Will his removal be justified? There was one more incident earlier of the same nature.

This is a serious dereliction of duty. You should take action against the worker. Being a general worker he is expected to do all administration related work which will include attending leakage from the sewage line. To start with, you can suspend him from work pending enquiry. This should be communicated to him in writing with reason for suspension as dereliction of duty. Then prepare a charge sheet with detailed incident, with date and time, his reaction when he was informed of the water seepage. He should be asked to show cause why action should not be taken against his gross dereliction of duty within three days. Ask him to submit the reply in writing and warn that if he does not reply within the stipulated time, it would be construed that he is accepting the charges and any punishment as deemed fit by the management shall be taken against him without further notice. If he gives reply find whether he is right or the reasons for not attending the work was satisfactory. If he is right, then withdraw the suspension order. If the reply is not satisfactory, declare a domestic enquiry to enquire further into the incident and take a call. For this, you will have to appoint an Enquiry Officer. Some formalities are there in association with conducting an enquiry. But without following these you cannot dismiss an employee, and if you dismiss without following these formalities, there is every chance that the employee would come back to your hospital.

Dear member,

Before deciding on whether the refusal by the general workers amounts to insubordination, let us find out the meaning of "general". The meaning of this word is not specialised or limited to one class of things.

The job assigned to the general worker was to fix leakage of water from the sewerage line on the 2nd-floor patient ward area of the hospital. From the nature of the task, it is well apparent that this is the job of a plumber and certainly not of a general worker. At best, he could have been called to assist the plumber but out and out assigning the task of fixing the leakage was out of the purview of his official duties. Therefore, his refusal is not tantamount to insubordination.

Above all, have you prepared the Job Descriptions (JD) for the position of a "General Worker"? If yes, then is attending to the plumbing complaints a part of the JD? If not, then on what grounds would you like to initiate disciplinary action?

The general worker could have been told to have a look and give a first-hand account of what was happening. Sometimes, merely giving instructions on the telephone is sufficient. However, the authorities expected to repair the leakage of the sewerage water.

The problem with the general worker was he did not use tact while refusing the work. He could have come to the hospital, checked the problem and he could have briefed how he was incapable of fixing the problem. But he lacked tactfulness. He has incensed the authorities because of his lack of savoir-faire.

In the hotel industry, there is a person called "Ken Fix It". They are the allrounders and can handle any job be it related to plumbing, carpentry, electrician, air-conditioning and so on. Your hospital needs to groom and deploy such factotums for the night duty. Removal of a general worker will not solve the problem. Take this incident as an opportunity and take steps to avoid repetition in future.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Why didn't the hospital call a plumber in immediately the problem was known.

I would never want to work in your hospital. How do you expect general staff to deal with these sorts of problems. One thing YOU HAVE NOT TOLD US - is this guy a plumber? If he is not, then as far as I can see, he is not qualified to touch sewerage pipes and well within his rights to refuse.

Tell us this, if he was not qualified but forced to deal with the problem, how would you treat him if he did something that made the problem worse. Judging by your current attitude, you would have just sacked him and not given his final dues - for a problem he had no control over. Such is the poor state of workers' rights in India methinks.

Please reply to us and tell us the full story, not just selected excerpts.

Sir, it would be surprising to you that he's a qualified plumber, yet instead of calling a cleaner to remove the sewage rubbish and repair the line, he outright refused to tackle the task. Sir, we have not sacked him. We are going to issue him a show cause for his behavior as we already knew that he could perform the task that’s why he was called. This case is under process. Regards.