Bhopal: Can’t Know What’s On Someone’s Mind, Say Women Who Work Night Shifts

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Women who have to work at night feel unsafe, especially when they are the only female at their workplace. They, however, say that with the increasing number of females in the workforce, they cannot expect or demand that night duty should not be assigned to women. Ranjana Jain, who works with the West Central Railways and is posted at the Bhopal Railway Station, says that at night, normally all five general ticket counters are manned by women.

And they have to often deal with passengers who are dead drunk and abusive. “We try to deal with them at our level. But when that does not work, we make an announcement requesting RPF personnel to come to our rescue,” she says. She says their officers are not to be blamed for the situation. “The number of women in the Railways has increased after the Covid-19 pandemic.

A large number of railwaymen were consumed by the virus and their wives were appointed on compassionate grounds,” she adds. So, assigning night duty to women cannot be avoided. “But yes, some police personnel should be deployed,” she says. Durga Morey, a nurse at Katju Hospital, says she did feel scared when she was posted at JP Hospital during the initial days of her service. “The nurses’ duty room at the OT was far away from the main gate and only a wardboy and I were on duty the whole night.

Doctors came only when a caesarean operation had to be performed. I used to lock myself up in the duty room and came out only when I was sure that an operation had to be done,” she says, adding that “it is impossible to know what is going on in someone’s mind.”

Another nurse, Gloria Singh, posted at Hamidia Hospital, however, has a different take on the issue. She says that neither she, nor any of her colleagues have ever felt scared or unsafe during night duty. “Night duty is a part of our profession. We have to compulsorily do night duty for at least six days every month. And 90 per cent of nurses are females. So, there is hardly any nurse who has not done night duty. We have got used to it,” she says. Gloria says that now besides ward boys, there are also ward ayahs. Also, there are female guards. That has also made a difference, she says.