Nagaland Govt urges NHM employees to withdraw strike

The Nagaland Health and Family Welfare Department on June 14^th, 2020, urged the National Health Mission Employees Association Nagaland (NEAN) to immediately call off its cease work strike in the interest of public service.

The association launched indefinite cease work strike from Sunday, alleging injustice towards the National Health Mission employees by the state government.

“We are all aware that there is shortage of manpower in the department to combat with the current pandemic situation and we acknowledge the services rendered by the NHM employees not only at this period of time but also in the past,” NHM mission director Dr Kevichusa Medikhru said in a letter to NEAN president Dr Shasinlo Magh.

Medikhru requested the association to withdraw its strike considering the urgent need to combat and contain the COVID-19 pandemic where number of positive cases in the state is increasing over the time. He sought favourable response from all the NHM employees in this regard.

He said the department was willing to give impartial hearing to the demands of the NHM employees and urged them to come forward for open discussion for redressal of their grievances. However, the letter said the unprecedented step to go on indefinite cease work from June 14 without even giving the department any prior notice or call for redressal is regretful.

Also read: Nagaland NHM employees’ pledge to go on indefinite strike

He said the department has already initiated steps to address the issue and even invited the NEAN for discussion on the matter today itself. The meeting unfortunately did not materialise due to unresponsiveness from the NEAN end, he added.

The association had decided to go for strike alleging injustice towards the NHM employees. The NEAN decision to strike follows the state government’s decision on Saturday to regularise the services 27 general duty medical officers who were appointed on May 27^th, 2020 for 12 months on the ground of constraint of manpowerNagaland NHM employees’ pledge to go on an indefinite strike to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a memorandum to the commissioner and secretary, health and family welfare department, NEAN president Dr Shasinlo Magh and general secretary Kewetso Kenye on Saturday said the association was amazed and disheartened at the government’s decision to regularise the services of the 27 doctors.

The memo said the association had appealed to the authority on many occasions to address the grievances of NHM Nagaland employees like regularisation of their services, pay parity with the state health employees, basic employees benefit etc.

“However, instead of addressing the issue of NHM employees who have been rendering their services with a meager remuneration on contractual basis, the department has gone to the extent of randomly appointing and regularising services overruling all service rules and laid down rules for recruitment on the pretext of Covid-19 pandemic,” the association said.

Alleging that these regularised employees had hardly rendered their services to the department, the association said the NHM employees are well trained in various programmes, including Covid-19, and have been rendering their valuable services in delivery of health care in the state since the inception of the NHM in Nagaland.

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