The 430-bed hospital at Vile Parle, the largest in the western suburbs, is completely deserted. With more than 1,000 employees in the clerical, manual and the administrative cadre of the hospital on a mass casual leave since last week in protest against the hospital's recruitment policy, no medical services are now available at the hospital. The casualty department is locked and all the patients have been discharged. The hospital has also stopped taking new admissions and no surgical procedures are being carried out. The administration has asked doctors and nurses to go on leave.

Vast empty corridors and rows of locked rooms greet you as you walk unhindered. A few employees playing cards on theground floor greet you with wry grins and get back to the game. As you peer through windows and some doors that are open you see unkept beds, unwashed basins and dirty floors. Beds look as though the patients occupying them have just left. This is because there was nobody to even fold the blankets when patients were discharged in phased manner over the week. Some went with pipes of intra-venous fluids still attached to their arms, others were carried out on stretchers.

Hospital authorities say these patients were shifted to other nearby hospitals. But that's only partly true. Most were on their own when they were discharged. Only cancer patients who need radiation therapy and patients who need physiotherapy are still being called to the hospital.

On the second floor not a single private room is occupied. Security personnel want to know why a lonely soul is wandering in the hospital with a notebook in his hand. After a handshake and a brief introduction he gives a friendly piece of advice: there are nostories here, go look somewhere else.

He is probably referring to the meeting between striking employees and the hospital management scheduled for this evening. But according to sources in the hospital, nothing is likely to come out of the meeting. The union's main demand is that administration employ kith and kin of existing employs. The strike was triggered off by the selection of some people, whom the union describes as outsiders. It now wants that these new employees be not allowed to work till a solution is found to the problem. And this is what has caused a deadlock. The hospital administration says that it can't suspend staff that has been selected through approved channels of employment.

Micah Joseph, director (administration) was stepping out of his office when this reporter caught up with him. Joseph said the union is disputing the recruitment of some persons into the managerial cadre, but added that the management had followed the norms in the recruitment process. He claimed the strike wasillegal and that the hospital would follow the norm of `no work no pay' that has been laid down by the Supreme Court. He, however, admitted that even after the strike was called off, it would take a few weeks or even a month to restore normalcy.