FGH employees continue protests

Say after five years they are being told to sit FPSC exams

ISLAMABAD: About 24 employees, mostly medical staff, of Federal Government Hospital have been protesting and observing strike for the past two weeks for regularisation of their services but their chants remain unheard yet.

On Saturday too, the employees protested before the Health Complex in Chak Shehzad carrying banners and placards demanding regularisation of their services.



They appealed to the Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to help regularise the employees as job security is their right.

They announced to continue to boycott their duties.

The hospital that caters to the needs of Chak Shehzad, Trameri, and other adjoining rural areas was constructed in 2012 by the then Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

New staff was hired through interviews, tests and advertisements, according to employees, and of them 18 were regularised under the regularisation policy of the government but gazetted employees over grade 16 mostly doctors and nurses could not be regularised.



The employees say this government is not ready to regularise them and they are being told that they will have to go through the recruiting process afresh and through FPSC. “I was appointed after test and interviews against advertised sanction post,” said Nusrat Bashir, a physiotherapist at the hospital, “now after five years they have been asking the position will be advertised across the country. For one position thousands of people will apply, will I be able to be selected,” she objected.

“We are the founding employees who established this hospital and department after hard work. Now after five years we have been asked to compete with fresh students,” she added.

The employees also regretted that their salaries are also released with delays and their contracts are renewed with great struggle. Actually this government is in a habit to take a decision after destruction so it would decide their fate if they resort to agitation and damage public and property, they commented.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2017.