With a request for survival, the Ayurvedic Medicine Manufacturers’ Organization of India (AMMOI) has urged the Minimum Wages Advisory Board (MWAB) of Kerala government to exclude Ayurveda hospitals from the purview of minimum wage rates fixed for employees.

In a letter addressed to the chairman of the Board, the association said it would be too difficult for the hospitals to survive if the rates fixed by the government are implemented. There are separate scales of pay for clinical and non-clinical staffs working in hospitals and they were made mandatory on implementation of act. AMMOI wants the government not to treat or compare Ayurveda hospitals with modern medicine institutions as their revenues are not comparable.

According to the notification issued by the government the hospitals have been categorized as bedded hospitals and non-bedded hospitals.

Non-bedded hospitals, clinics, scanning centres, medical laboratories and ambulance services are categorized on the basis of the number of employees employed. The bedded hospitals are categorized on the basis of the numbers of beds.

The letter of AMMOI shows the big differences in the case of bed availability in government hospitals where treatment is given free. The total number of bed availability in all the government medical colleges of modern medicine is 9365, where as the number of beds in government Ayurveda medical colleges is only 1150. This shows that even for free treatment, the flow of patients to Ayurveda hospitals is less compared to allopathic hospitals. The situation is worse in private sector where all the Ayurveda hospitals are struggling for survival, said Dr D Ramanathan, secretary of AMMOI.

He said there is huge variation in the number of beds in the general and district hospitals also. The estimated number of beds in the 1250 allopathic hospitals in the government sector is 37021. There are 120 Ayurveda hospitals and 793 dispensaries in the government sector. The number of beds in these centres altogether comes around 2200 only.

The association said in the private sector all the traditional treatment institutions are facing challenges and struggling to survive. So, government should not make the wage rates mandatory for Ayurveda hospitals because their earnings are very low compared to modern medical institutions.

The biggest Ayurveda hospital in the private sector, Kottakal Aya Vaidyasala, has only 300 beds and in Vaidyaratnam it is only 100.