Contractual employees block road for regular jobs

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 19

The contractual nurses and paramedical workers of the Guru Nanak Dev Hospital, who have been protesting for four days for regularisation of their jobs, intensified their stir by blocking the traffic on the Majitha road for around an hour on Thursday.

The blockade left hundreds of commuters stranded. The protesters raised slogans against the state government and formed a human chain to block the traffic.

They said Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh had promised to regularise the services of all contractual employees within one year of the formation of government in the state. The promise hasn’t been kept, they said. The employees rued that the government had already completed 16 years in office but no one even talks about the regularisation of jobs.

The hospital has around 250 contractual employees. Some of them have been working for over 10 years. Sarup Kaur, president of the Contractual Staff Nurses and Paramedical Employees Union, said, “The protest will continue until our demands are met. We have been waiting for too long. Our demands are justified. The loss of services for the patients is because the government is apathetic towards employees in particular and patients in general.”