Jalandhar: NHM staff take to streets, seek regular pay scales

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 9

Protesting against the policies of the state government, employees of the National Health Mission (NHM) on Thursday took to streets to hold a protest.

Employees of the NHM in Kapurthala said the government’s declaration to regularise 36,000 employees was a big lie. They said while they risked their lives to extend health services during the Covid-19 pandemic, the government was neither rewarding Covid warriors nor considering their demands.

They said if other states could pay regular pay scales to health workers what stopped the state government from doing so. The union members disbursed pamphlets of the government’s ‘false’ promises and appealed to them to boycott the government in the upcoming elections. They even exhorted patients not to subscribe to the government’s lofty claims. They said unless the equal work, equal pay policy was implemented, they would keep intensifying their protest. Dr Prabhjot Jabbal, Dr Sanjeev Sharma, Navdeep Kaur and Dr Yogesh, among others, were present on the occasion.

The protest was held in solidarity with the NHM employees’ statewide agitation. Dr Inderjit Singh Rana, state head of the NHM Employees’ Association, Punjab, said this was the first such government which was concerned neither about its employees nor the health of the people of the state. These National Health Mission employees of the Health Department had been fighting for their legitimate demands for a long time, but the state government hardly cared about them.

Dr Rana said whenever there was a meeting of the association representatives with the state government, ministers or higher officials, everyone’s statement was different. The lack of consistency in the statements of the Chief Minister, the Health Minister or higher officials of the Health Department proved that the state government was not serious about resolving their issues.

Expressing their views on the same subject, state committee members Jaswinder Kaur and Gurpreet Singh said a massive rally would be held in Amritsar, the home town of Health Minister OP Soni, which would be an attempt to wake up the government from its deep slumber.

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