Khan said an official order will soon be issued to regularise the services of these nurses. ILLUSTRATION: EXPRESS
An improvised explosive device (IED) blast targeted a polio team in Regai Tangi, Mamond tehsil, injuring a levies official on Monday.
According to Khar political administration official Mamond Abdul Haseeb, the polio team was administering vaccinations when unidentified militants attacked them. The IED was remotely detonated around 8am when the polio team reached Regai Tangi – 15 kilometres south west of Khar. Levies official Faqeer Shah sustained injuries and was shifted to Agency Headquarters Hospital.
The remaining team members remained unhurt.
On May 20, a levies official was killed in the same tehsil while escorting a polio team.
Meanwhile, 2,650 teams have been formed to vaccinate 727,317 children under the age of five in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), said an official of the FATA Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI). This would not include North Waziristan Agency.
The teams include 2,326 mobile teams, 246 polio-centre based teams and 78 transit point teams, shared an EPI official.
Nearly 163,000 children of North Waziristan will miss out as the agency is considered volatile in terms of security.
Some areas of South Waziristan are also out of their reach as the situation on ground is not any better for polio workers, added the official.
A total of 24 polio cases have been confirmed in Fata in 2013 – these include 10 from Khyber Agency, 10 from North Waziristan, three from Frontier Region (FR) Bannu and one from FR DI Khan.
The official said an anti-polio drive will also begin in FR Peshawar after a few months.
Nursing staff to boycott anti-polio drive in G-B
Nursing staff in Gilgit has announced boycotting the polio vaccination drive scheduled to be launched across Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) on Tuesday.
Taken a day ahead of the drive, the decision is meant to press the government to regularise services of nearly 1,500 staff members based in seven districts of the region. “Regularisation of our services was due in June 2012, but it hasn’t happened as yet,” complained a nurse who attended a staff meeting held at a local hotel.
“We have come to the conclusion that our issue will never be looked at seriously if we continue working silently,” she said while requesting anonymity. “We have decided to call a protest rally and will lay siege to the chief minister’s office and assembly building till the acceptance of our demands.”
Attended by nurses from all valleys of the region, the staff meeting was convened to chalk out an action plan to make the protest effective.
It is estimated that the boycott will result in the exclusion of 200,000 children below the age of five in the anti-polio drive. However, the staff believes the time is suitable to get their demands accepted, since the authorities can in no way afford to let the vaccination campaign be derailed.
G-B Minister for Health Gulbahar Khan put the blame on “a few” trying to sabotage the understanding reached previously. “We had met with their (nurses) representatives earlier and agreed to end the boycott,” Khan told The Express Tribune. “But there are a few who are provoking others to go on strike,” he said, without specifying who they were.
Khan said an official order will soon be issued to regularise the services of these nurses, besides adjusting their pay from June 2012. He, however, warned of strict action against those politicising the issue for personal gains.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2013.
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