Jyoti Subedi, 26, is a nurse who works in Bir Hospital’s Neuro-Intensive Care Unit where patients needing post-surgery critical care are admitted.
About a month ago, she called me to tell that she was being denied an opportunity to study advance course in nursing on scholarship even after she had cleared all the qualifying exams.
Before getting into the details, knowing Jyoti’s background will help us understand the significance of her case in its larger context: how official corruption is demoralizing and driving away talents from this country.[break]
Born and raised in Prithvinagar, a small, remote village in Jhapa district, some 300 km east of Kathmandu, she studied at a local Nepali medium school sorely ill-equipped to groom her to face future challenges. She passed her 10th grade not with flying colors, “but still scoring the highest among the girls in my class,” Jyoti said when I met her at Bir one afternoon. After SLC, she moved to Biratnagar to study nursing and then to Kathmandu in search of a job soon after appearing in the final exams of her nursing studies.
Confident and positive, it didn’t take long for her to find a job at a good hospital. But since the field is flooded with qualified workforce, she had to agree to work as an unpaid volunteer. After the completion of the “probation” period, the hospital offered her a stipend of Rs 4,000. “That was the highest pay among the new nurses,” she said.
But her hard work and patience paid off when she got selected to work at Bir Hospital. “I had scored the highest both in the written test – 98 out of 100 marks – and in the interview,” she told me. As a show of confidence in her ability, the hospital gave her a list of options and let her decide where she wanted to work. She chose the neuro ICU ward.
Diligent at work, intelligent in dealing with people and never one to shirk her duties, she was soon a popular figure at the hospital whom patients sought, doctors trusted and colleagues envied.
Bijay Gajmer/The Week File Photo
Unlike many of us who worry too much about our career and future, she was never bothered by such things. She seemed to have complete faith in her capabilities until some highly placed officials at the National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS) decided to dent her faith in merits.
NAMS, which looks after Bir Hospital, has allocated two out of the 30 seats in the Post-Basic Bachelor in Nursing (PBBN) to the deserving staffers serving at Bir.
“The seats are awarded purely on the basis of merit because to get selected, the interested among the nursing staff at the hospital have to compete and score higher than other candidates,” Jyoti told me.
The academy had taken exams for the reserved quotas in which three Bir staffers, including Jyoti, had competed. But the office bearers of NAMS, the employees at Bir accuse, have already sold one quota and are planning to sell another for their personal gains.
While two of her colleagues gave up all hopes and joined somewhere else, Jyoti filed a case at the Supreme Court after the academy denied her, now the only eligible candidate for the quota seats, admission. Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), where she had filed a case earlier, has already directed the NAMS authority to accept her as a reserved quota student, but the academy has so far defied the directive.
Jyoti and other staff at Bir have openly claimed that NAMS Vice Chancellor Dr Damodar Prasad Pokharel, the person responsible for giving the final seal of approval, has been dillydallying the process under various pretexts.
“The seat will automatically lapse if Bir does not send one of its qualified staff in due time,” said Jyoti. “The highly placed NAMS officials are by now so disgruntled with me that they might just let the seat lapse than send anybody at all.”
The more you learn about the case the more you feel this issue is not just about one Jyoti. It is also about others like her: sisters of ordinary people, daughters of common citizens.
Just imagine how frustrating it gets for a person from a humble background very close to achieving her dream after years of sacrifices when somebody throws cold water and wakes her up to a different reality. Just think about those years she has spent away from home, from her parents, doing things as a nurse a mere thought of which makes many of us squirm: wiping pus, cleaning up vomits, dressing wounds, taking care of the sick and terminally ill patients. And doing all of that with a smile, day and night.
When I met Jyoti at Bir Hospital recently, she looked weary, thinner than the last time I saw her, and her voice was hoarse, which, I learnt later, was due to all the pleading and hollering she had been doing at different places in the hopes of getting justice.
The Most Honorable Supreme Court is slated to give its verdict in the case on March 24.
“All my hopes are hinged on that verdict,” she said.
The writer is a copy editor at Republica
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