File photo of the SMIMER hospital in Surat

SURAT: Barely a week after 68 students of a Bhuj girls' college were lined up and forced to strip to prove they weren't menstruating, female trainee clerks of the Surat Municipal Corporation were on Thursday allegedly made to stand naked in a state-run hospital for a long time while lady doctors subjected them to a gynaecological finger test and asked personal questions.

According to a complaint lodged by the SMC Employees Union with the municipal commissioners, around 100 employees got a rude shock when they reached the Surat Municipal Institute of Medical Education and Research for their mandatory fitness test. "Female employees were forced to stand naked together in groups of around 10 in a room where they did not have any privacy. The door was not properly closed and the only thing blocking the view from outside was a curtain," said a senior corporation employee in whom one of the women confided.

Besides being subjected to the controversial finger test, even unmarried women were allegedly asked if they had ever been pregnant. Some of the women accused the lady doctors who conducted the gynaecological tests of also behaving rudely with them.

Male trainees had to undergo a general fitness assessment that included eye, ENT, heart and lung tests, besides an overall check-up. The fitness test is mandatory for confirmation of an employee's service on completion of the three-year probation.

‘Doctors performed finger test on women’

The issue was brought to the knowledge of SMCEU by a few trainee women employees out of the nearly 400 whose services will be regularised this year. On hearing about their trauma, we demand an immediate halt to such insulting and inhuman tests. I have never heard such a test on women employees anywhere else,” said AA Shaikh, general secretary of the employees' union.

Shaikh alleged that doctors performing the finger test on women in a group was demeaning. "If they (doctors) had any doubt about an employee’s health, they should have got tests done in an acceptable manner. Asking even unmarried women about past pregnancies is downright insulting.”

Ashwin Vachhani, head of the gynaecology department at the hospital, said: "We have to examine women physically since it is mandatory as per the guidelines. I don't know if such tests are done on men, but in case of women we follow rules to find out if they have any specific illness.”

A 45-year-old female employee said she had taken a fitness test around 20 years ago, but it did not involve any such procedures.

