Health employees' protest affects Covid sampling, vaccination in city

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, December 10

On the one hand, the threat of Omicron variant of coronavirus is looming large and the Health Department has been asked to increase the number of samples collected each day while on the other, nearly 2,000 employees working under the National Health Mission (NHM), Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and outsourced employees of VRDL labs in the district are on strike which has slowed down the ongoing works of sampling and vaccination.

Demands of protesting employees

VRDL lab employees are demanding absorption in the Department of Medical Education, National Health Mission employees are demanding regularisation of their services, while ASHAs are demanding fixed salaries as per the Haryana state pattern.

ASHAs also staged a protest demonstration at the DC office and handed over a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner.

Staff under the NHM include auxiliary nurse midwives, community health officers, staff nurses and doctors. The main responsibility of the ASHAs is to take sampling kits to vaccination centres and they keep them back at health centres and for vaccination, they transport vaccines to session sites and then take them back to centres.

At present, only regular staff is working and trying to meet demands. Earlier people used to get reports within 24 hours but now, it takes two-three days for the same. To ensure that the testing is not affected, the department is now going towards Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) instead of RTPCR so that testing is not halted. They have demanded 14,000 kits from the department for the same.

“Testing is getting affected due to the strike of the NHM employees. Since there are only limited number of employees at the Patiala lab as well so the number of samples being sent are less,” said a senior official from the Health Department.

Nodal officer for vaccination against Covid, Dr Puneet Juneja said with the NHM employees on strike, the pace of vaccination had slowed down.

Some vaccination centres have been shut where no regular staff is appointed while to tackle this, the department has set up 35 permanent vaccination centres in the district.

Preeti, a city resident, said her second dose of Covid vaccination was pending and when she went to the vaccination centre near her house, it was shut. “Now I will wait for my husband to take me to another centre when he will be free,” she said.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.