Terminated nurses ask for equal treatment, plan more protests

CHENNAI: The nurses’ associations say that it is unfair to terminate about 800 nurses, while retaining 2400 of them. “No proper response has been given when questioned about this disparity,” they claim.

Close to 4,000 nurses were recruited on contract basis in 2020, for COVID-19 duty in government institutions. Nurses had completed the examination and were shortlisted on merit by the Medical Recruitment Board (MRB) and hired as contract workers by the state health department. However, as the cases of COVID-19 declined in government institutions, only 2,400 nurses were retained on duty and 800 of them were terminated.

“We’re not happy with this decision. We want equal treatment for all. Most of us left other jobs to serve in government institutions during the pandemic, not to earn mony but to help people,” said R Surya, a nurse who was terminated recently.

The nurses protested at the Directorate of Medical Services on Monday and met the secretary at the Chief Minister’s cell to present their demands. After protests by nurses, Health Minister Ma Subramanian had said on Monday that the nurses will be re-recruited when fresh vacancies arise, or new programmes are introduced by the government.

“We’ll be meeting the Chief Minister MK Stalin and Health Minister Ma Subramanian to stress our demands. We believe that there has been a disparity in retaining the staff and we’ll protest again if our demands are not met. Though we have stopped the protest immediately, we will continue it if our concerns are not addressed by the health department officials,” said Rajesh Selvaraj, nurse and convenor of the association.

Meanwhile, the officials from the Directorate of Medical Education maintain the statement that the nurses will be taken back on duty when the new vacancies arise.