Regularisation of services: After YDA, paramedics and ancillary staff jump on the bandwagon

Threaten to go on strike from Dec 11.

RAWALPINDI:

After the Young Doctors Association (YDA), it is the paramedical and ancillary staff of the three allied hospitals of Rawalpindi that are up in arms against the Punjab health department.

They have threatened to go on strike from December 11 if the health department does not accept their demands for regularisation of their services and provision of a new service structure.

Representatives of the Punjab Paramedics Alliance (PPA), including Muhammad Ali, Chaudhry Khayam, Ijaz Chohan and Malik Shakeel, said on Saturday that the Punjab government has approved a new service structure and allowance for paramedics and ancillary staff but the health department is delaying its implementation.

The PPA represents people serving in Holy Family Hospital (HFH), Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) and District Headquarter Hospital.

They said the government has approved a risk allowance of Rs1,500 for employees in scale 1 to 4 and also ordered to increase the allowance up to Rs15,000 for employees in scale 5 to 17. The employees, however, have not yet received these allowances.

Officials of the HFH Welfare Trust — representing around 300 daily-wage sanitary workers, helpers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and office boys who serve at the hospital — condemned the police brutality against paramedics on Mall Road in Lahore last week, where they were baton charged while holding a peaceful protest. They vowed to join the paramedics in the protest for regularisation of their services.



Every month, the HFH administration issues a letter seeking services of daily wage workers and extending service of the current workers for one more month, said Malik Naseer Ahmed, who works at HFH. He said the workers are paid Rs330 per day for their services and are not entitled to any incentives or allowances. A lot of these workers have been serving at the hospital for the last 20 years, he added.

Yasir Abbasi, who also works at HFH, interjected, “Our peaceful efforts have so far bore no fruit and we are being forced to go on strike.” He said that elected representatives of Pakistan Muslim League-N, such as Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Hanif Abbasi and Malik Shakeel Awan, promised to regularise their services but nothing has been done so far.

Rawalpindi Medical College Principal Dr Afzal Farooqi, when contacted, assured that demands of both the paramedics and the ancillary staff will be fulfilled by the Punjab government.

He said the health department can extend the service structure for paramedics and allow regularisation of services of daily wage workers by allocating an annual budget for them. He said that every year the hospitals allocate budget for paramedics and ancillary staff, adding that a separate budget can be allocated for them if the Punjab government regularises their services.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2012.