LAHORE:
Nasreen became a nurse in 1986 and started working at a public hospital in Punjab. She was told that if she worked hard, she would be promoted in seven years.
Twenty-five years and thousands of patients later, she is still a government employee in grade 16, the same grade she started in.
“There are around 300 nurses who haven’t been promoted for 27 years,” said Shazia, who is joint secretary of the newly formed Young Nurses Association. There are a total of 11,523 nurses in the Health Department waiting for promotion, she added.
The nurses met with Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and Health Department officials on Friday to discuss their demands.
A Health Department official said after the meeting that a notification for the promotion of 98 nurses who had started working in 1985 would be issued on Saturday or early next week.
“We are hopeful after our meeting with the government that our demands will be met, but so far nothing has been done and we haven’t been given any timeframe,” said Shazia. “The law minister said they would create new seats [for promoted nurses] but when they would do so, he didn’t say.”
Apart from overdue promotions, the nurses want a pay raise in the form of an allowance, the Health Professionals Allowance (HPA), like the one recently granted to government doctors.
The YNA was formed shortly after the nurses began protesting for better pay last month, following similar protests by doctors, pharmacists and paramedics. “Some young nurses came to me last month and talked about raising our voice for getting our promotions and revised pay structures. I immediately decided to join them,” said Shazia.
“This is what happened with many other senior nurses and thus we protested and forced the government to think about pay structure. Things might not get settled immediately but we have now organised ourselves and will campaign effectively to get our rights.”
The nurses have given the government until December 24 to meet their demands. “We have organised ourselves very much now. If our demands are not met we will announce a countrywide strike after December 24,” said YNA President Samina Kafayat. “Young nurses are not due for promotion, but we are protesting for our HPA which nobody has talked about with us yet.”
“We are giving promotions to the nurses step by step. First we will give them their due promotions and then will talk about pay structure,” said an official of Health Department dealing with the matter.
According to the rules, there should be 25 nurses of grade 17 for every 100 nurses of grade 16. But according to the Health Department’s own figures, that ratio is below two grade 17 nurses for every 100 grade 16 nurses.
Public doctors in Punjab in grade 17 get an HPA of Rs15,000 while doctors in higher grades get Rs10,000.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 10th, 2011.
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