Nangal hospital staff sans pay for 6 months

OR No pay for 6 months, hospital staff braces for lacklustre Diwali

BQ: Clerical employees on strike

All paper work was completed in time. The salaries could not be disbursed as the clerical staff had been on a strike for the past several weeks. Parminder Kumar, civil surgeon

Tribune News Service

Nangal, November 3

Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Civil Hospital staff, including doctors, have not been paid their salary for the past six months. According to authorities, it will not be possible for them to disburse their salary soon.

The hospital has a total of 31 employees, including 10 doctors, eight nurses, three laboratory technicians and six Class IV employees.

According to a doctor, they had last received their salary in May. Despite repeated requests, they had not been paid the dues, he said.

The hospital was opened on February 12, 2016, without an approval from the state government after the local civic body constructed its Rs 9-crore building. It was inaugurated by then Punjab Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal. For a couple of years, the 50-bed hospital remained paralysed due to inadequate infrastructure and staff and things improved only a few years ago, when the state government recruited doctors and other staff on sanctioned posts under its non-planned expenditure.

The aggrieved employees said being recruited on posts sanctioned under the non-planned expenditure, the Civil Surgeon Office had to take an approval from the Finance Department to disburse their salaries every year and it had failed to get the department nod in time which led to the delay.

When contacted, Civil Surgeon Parminder Kumar claimed that all paper work had been completed in time. The salaries could not be disbursed as the clerical staff had been on a strike for the past several weeks and it would not be possible in the coming days too because of the ongoing strike, the Civil Surgeon added.