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Abhilasha Kapoor
Amritsar, June 6
Permanent employees of Government Medical College here supported the contractual workers protesting for the past five days by joining them during the protest today. Permanent nurses would also be proceeding on mass casual leave for two days from tomorrow.
The contractual nurses and the ancillary staff union have been protesting to demand regularisation of their services. With around 400 contractual workers at the hospital going on protest, the hospital authorities are already facing a difficulty in providing services to the patients.
With regular employees, too, on leave, it is feared that medical services would be affected greatly. The hospital has till now been using the services of nursing students of various colleges to fill the gap caused by contractual workers. However, with permanent employees too not available, the nursing students would not be able to handle the workload.
The Nurses Association Punjab’s president Raj Bedi Anand said, “We have already given a notice and would be going on two days’ mass leave. We would sit with protesting contractual workers.” She said contractual employees were working for the past six years, but they were being paid very less.
She said that none of the permanent employees would render their services to the patients and the hospital. “Both the day and night work in the hospital would come to a halt due to the protest by the employees in the hospital,” said Anand.
Contractual Workers Association leader Sukhjinder Singh said, “The responsibility for the trouble which would be faced by the patients is that of the state government because it had failed to fulfil its promise of regularisation of jobs.”