On third day of their ongoing protest against State health department more than 7,000 contractual workers of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) gathered at capital and gheraod the office of Director-in-Chief (DIC), Health and also State RHC office at Namkum stalling the normal works.
The State wide strike – that kicked off on July 3- of more than 60,000 contractual workers of NRHM has severely affected the health services in State.
“In striking contractual workers we have lost around 60 per cent of our manpower and same proportion of works. This has affected our work especially the work of immunization through vaccines and institutional deliveries,” said Civil Surgeon of Chatra, Binod Oraon. Civil Surgeons of Bokaro Surendra Nath Tiwari echoed same words.
Both the CSs said that they were trying to compensate the loss of manpower through the permanent workers of NRHM. “But compensating the loss of 60 per cent of manpower is too much,” Tiwari said.
On Friday the agitated workers burnt the effigies of Health Secretary K Vidyasagar – who is currently on an outing with his family in Kashmir – to express their displeasure with health department’s “indifference, autocracy and inhumane” attitudes towards them.
The demonstrators alleged the department had been irrational in not implementing the report of recommendation committee. Recommendation committee was constituted last year to look into the demands of NRHM contract workers. This committee was headed by DIC Praveen Chandra with members from NRHM contractual staffs.
The report of the committee was made public in December last year. But the department has failed to take any step towards implementing the recommendations of the committee –which was headed by its own DIC. This has injected disenchantment among the contractual workers.
NRHM contractual staffs announced their strike a month earlier starting July 3. The department didn’t hold nay talk with the agitated contractual workers in the one month window period. However they released a letter affecting the dismissal of Rahul Pratap Singh – who had led the protest of contract workers.
Rahul alleged that he was dismissed “autocratically” by the department officials because he had led the protest. “They have become autocratic. They just want to demolish the group and unity of the contractual workers of NRHM,” Rahul said.