Regular jobs: NHM staff write to director

Nikhila Pant Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 7

Annoyed with the state government’s non-chalant attitude towards their demands, the staff working under the National Health Mission has written a letter to the mission director, Varun Roojum, and has listed out its demands.

The employees have also requested Roojum to give them time for a meeting or else, they would have to take to the protest path.

The employees argued that there were a total of 8,000 NHM staff members in the state, all of whom are well educated, experienced and hardworking.

“As per the norms, the job of an employees working on contractual basis has to be regularised after three years but we have been working on contractual basis for the past 10 years. We have made the mission a success in the state but our jobs are yet to be regularised,” the employees said.

They complained that the salaries of all NHM employees were very low.

“Except the annual 6 per cent hike in our salaries, we have not been getting any other increment of allowances like the regular employees working in the Health Department. Before this, we brought our demands to the attention of the state government in 2011 and 2015 but all that we got were lofty promises, which didn’t hold ground,” they added.

The NHM staff also argued that despite the fact that they were already being given low remuneration, their salaries were deducted for the days on which they observed strike in favour of their long-pending demands.

Urging the director to fix a meeting to hear their demands, the NHM staff also demanded that like regular employees, in the case of sudden death of an employee, his/her kin be given a job on compassionate grounds.

They said they would be left with no option but to protest in case their demands were not considered.