After teachers and doctors, lady health workers demand fixed jobs, salaries

The CM promised to regularise their jobs after the 18th amendment.

KARACHI: After teachers and doctors, it was the turn of hundreds of lady health workers to stage a protest outside the Karachi Press Club over the delay in the payment of their salaries and a lack of job security.

When they tried to march towards Governor House inside the red zone, however, they were greeted by misbehaving female police officials and tear gas.

“We have been working on contract for the last 17 years. We will stay on the streets and encircle Governor House until our job statuses are changed,” said Haleema Laghari, who is the head of All Pakistan Lady Health Workers Employee Association in Sindh.

Laghari complained that the government had enough money to give permanent jobs to thousands of teachers, but not for workers like her who were responsible for performing basic healthcare functions across the province. “We play a major role in polio eradication campaigns and its success is partly due to our efforts.”

The Supreme Court decided to raise their salaries from Rs3,000 to Rs7,000 in August 2011. But Laghari said that the 24,000 lady health workers in the province have not received a penny in compensation for the last five months.

She claimed that 50 of their women were injured in the tear gas shelling and scuffles with the women police, however, ASP Usman Bajwo present at the occasion rejected her claims and said that the women might have been injured while trying to cross the barbed wires laid across the red zone.

The association’s Karachi manager, Nasim Munir, told The Express Tribune that Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah had assured them last year that their jobs will be made permanent once the provincial government comes to control healthcare. But even after the passage of the 18th amendment, they are still waiting for the minister to fulfill his promise.

The provincial health secretary, Hashim Raza Zaidi, and special health secretary, Dr Suresh Kumar, held talks with the protesters and assured them that their salaries will be released within a few days. The health workers, however, rejected that offer and insisted that any resolution should also include regularisation of their jobs.

Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad said in a press statement that immediate steps are being taken for the release of salaries of lady health workers.

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