YAMINI

The non-payment of three months' salary to nurses working for the hospitals run by North Delhi Municipal Corporation has created a piquant situation with the nurses now on the warpath. Now, the nurses and paramedics, backed by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, will take out a protest march in Delhi on January 15, 2021, pressing for their demands

The continued neglect of the nurses by the authorities is also putting the Covid vaccination programme of the government in jeopardy. The striking nurses and paramedics are determined that they will not cooperate in the vaccination drive if their demands are not addressed.

The nurses and paramedics not just want immediate payment of their pending salaries, but also their unpaid dearness allowances, bonus etc. Many nurses have retired after working for 32 years without having a single promotion in their long tenure, including the nurses union chief Indu Jamwal. Many nurses and paramedics in peripheral hospitals have not received their salaries even for four or five months. It is shocking that even after so many years having elapsed, the nurses and paramedics have still to get their arrears from the acceptance of the seventh central pay commission.

The nurses are at sea over this situation and say that this difficulty has come only in the past few years. The situation was all right earlier. It is the fervent desire of the nurses and paramedics that the central government should intervene and take the affairs in its own hands to sort out the financial mess.

Some 700 nurses and 150 paramedics are on strike. Some 25% of them are working on contract basis for a long time and are seeking regularization of their services.