Hundreds of agitating members of association of contractual workers of National Health Mission (NHM) donated blood on Monday.
The association started their mass casual leave agitation in support of their five-point agenda from the day. The agitation of the NHM workers affected the health services of the State. However the emergency health
services remained unaffected as the association had exempted the workers working there from strike in view of public interest.
In order to hammer home humane nature of their protest the NHM workers donated blood at various places. In Dehradun the camp was organised at Gandhi Park where 60 units of blood was collected. The state President of the association of contractual NHM workers Sanjay Chauhan said that workers participated in large numbers in donation camps but in some places due to limitation of blood storing capacities all of the members could not donate blood. He said that the association would go on a complete strike from October 15 if the state government do not accepts their genuine demands.
As a precursor to mass casual leave the NHM contractual health workers worked for two hours more than their duty hours from October 8 to October 10 while sporting black arm bands in support of their demands.
There are more than 1400 contractual workers employed under NHM. The demands of the association are wage revision, health and life insurance cover and removal of pay disparity. The association is particularly peeved as one of an employee Jaspal Rana was removed shortly after declaration by the State Chief Minister Harish Rawat that no NHM worker would be removed.