Pune: 35000 Contractual doctors under NHM stage protest demanding permanent post

Pune: Almost 35,000 contractual employees employed under the National Health Mission (NHM) in Maharashtra have gone on an indefinite strike demanding permanent posts. They have decided to start an agitation at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan on 30th October to press for their long pending demands. 

During the protest, doctors and nurses including other healthcare staff employed under the NHM scheme would boycott OPD duties. However, emergency services such as s immunisation, dialysis, and outpatient care, emergency services will stay unaffected. 

In a meeting with Health Commissioner Dheeraj Kumar, representatives of eleven health staff organizations demanded that NHM-recruited contractual workers in the health department should be given job security comparable to that offered by the governments of Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Manipur, Rajasthan, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana.

The contract employees have been recruited on an emergency basis, and some of them have been outsourced to deal with the workforce crunch in hospitals. The total amount of contractual employees currently includes 650 doctors from AYUSH and 2,500 doctors from the National Child Health Scheme, 2,573 tuberculosis department staff, 2,000 laboratory technicians, 4,000 semi-nurses, 8,500 community medical officers, and other healthcare workers, reports the daily.

In this group, the starting salary for doctors is approximately Rs 28,000, while the initial salary for tuberculosis workers is Rs 17,000. Physicians employed by the National Child Health Department begin at Rs 17,000, and those who have worked there for more than ten years are paid Rs 37,000. Auxiliary nurses are being paid Rs 20,000 after years of service, but they can not avail other benefits that a permanent employee can enjoy. A union leader told The Indian Express, “Despite 17,000 vacant posts in the health department, the department has refused to absorb contract workers with over a decade of experience…”

Pay parity and permanent post has been a constant issue for NHM workers for years. In 2021, 500 National Health Mission (NHM) employees working under the Chandigarh health department went on an indefinite strike to press for their demand of getting equal pay for equal work.