Lady health workers: Unpaid staff to boycott polio campaign

SUKKUR: Hundreds of lady health workers staged a protest rally and a demonstration to demand four months of pay and permanent jobs outside the Thul press club on Sunday. The women were led by former MNA Marvi Memon and the chairperson of the All Pakistan Lady Health Workers Association, Bushra Arain. Arain announced that they were boycotting the polio campaign and mother and child health care week. She demanded that the government approve the plan, give them permanent jobs and upgrade their salaries. The government should also pay compensation to the families of the workers who died during the struggle, she said. Arain expressed sorrow over the death of a lady health worker in Lahore because of alleged police torture, on Saturday. She held the chief minister of the Punjab, prime minister and the president responsible for her death. According to her, she was the sixth lady worker to have lost her life during the struggle. She also announced that lady health workers from all over Sindh would gather at the mausoleum of Benazir Bhutto in Garhi Khuda Bux on Monday to go on a hunger strike for 48 hours. “This programme was introduced by [her] in 1994 and now the so-called jiyalas of her party are going against her vision.” She described the Punjab chief minister’s offer of two months’ salaries a “lollipop”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2011.