Nurses continue protest, seek regulation of services

With a demand to regularise services of about 10,000 staff nurses, who were recruited through Medical Recruitment board, permanent employees, the nurses argued that they had been promised that they would be made permanent after two years.

Stating that there is a Government Order which mandates the same, a protesting nurse said, “GO 191 of 1962 mandates that those recruited through the board should be considered permanent employees.

However, currently the appointments are made through rule 10A1, which mandates at least eight years of service before being made permanent. There are 400 such nurses who have still not been made permanent.”

While it is mandated that if the nurses are made permanent from their date of joining, they should be a paid a salary of Rs 42,000 a month, along with the arrears, the nurses said that the government does not do it since it would cause a loss of Rs 360 crore to the exchequer.

“The government proposes a hike of Rs 4,000 from our present salary of Rs 7,500, which is not sufficient. The officials are asking us to meet Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan and Health Minister Dr C Vijaya Baskar after 15 days. It is just an attempt to break the protest,” the nurse added. It may be noted that around 4,000 nurses from all 32 districts participated in the protests, while 1,000 nurses had been stopped on the outskirts of the city.

The protesters claimed that the police did not even allow them to use the toilet in the protest venue. If forced out of DMS, the nurses threatened that they would stage a road roko, which could lead to huge traffic snarl in the arterial Anna Salai.