Public health: Nurses threaten boycott if demands not met

Association gives government January 20 as the deadline to take action.

LAHORE: The nurses working for the Health Department will go on a strike form January 20 if their demands for a pay raise, promotion and a revised service structure are not met, Young Nurses Association have said.

A YNA delegation that recently met Health Secretary Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan to discuss their demands told The Express Tribune that while the secretary had assured them that the demands would be addressed, the department had issued no notification in this regard.

Explaining the pay raise demand, YNA general secretary Shazia said nurses in basic-pay-scale 16 should be given a raise of Rs10,000 and those in BPS 17 and above Rs7,500.

She said like the pay raise approved recently for the doctors, the raise for nurses could be given in the form of a Health Professional Allowance (HPA). About promotions, she said 11,523 nurses were awaiting promotion decisions due for 27 years. She said that according to the decision taken in a Departmental Promotion Committee a notification for promotion of the 98 nurses hired in 1985 was due in mid December.

However, she added, no such notification had so far been issued. Another DPC had recently been organised for promotion of nurses from BPS-17 to BPS-18 but no action had yet been taken.

The general secretary said the third demand was about a revision of the service structure and addition of 788 seats for nurses (eight in BPS-20, 14 in BPS-19, 58 in BPS-18, 580 in BPS-17 and 110 of nursing instructors). Several YNA members said they would boycott work in emergency wards if the government continued to ignore their demands. They said the Health Department had asked for a week to initiate action on these demands on expiry of the first YNA deadline (on December 31).

However, they said, the department had yet to take concrete measures.  YNA president Rozeena said the government had so far failed to fulfill the assurances it had given to the nurses. A Health Department spokesman said the three demands had been forwarded to higher authorities and that progress was expected soon.

Social security doctors

Meanwhile, Social Security Doctors Association (SSDA) on Sunday called for a strike and protest demonstrations at the Social Security hospitals on January 19 to demand Rs15,000 Health Professional Allowance for doctors employed at these hospitals.

SSDA General Secretary Dr Sardar Baloch said social security doctors were getting Rs3,500 in HPA while doctors at other public-sector hospitals were getting Rs15,000 in HPA. The Young Doctors Association said they supported the SSDA demand.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2012.