NHM sends proposal for regular jobs to 4K health workers

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 23

There is finally a ray of hope for over 4,000 National Health Mission (NHM) employees of seeing their services regularised as the NHM has sent a proposal to the state government in this regard.

Under the mission

• 10,000 contract staff currently employed with the NHM in Punjab
• 30 categories of employees will benefit under the scheme
• 4,053 employees meet the criteria of 10 years of service
• 81 workers on posts that do not exist in Health Department also eligible

CM Channi agrees to labourers’ demands

Chandigarh: CM Charanjit Singh Channi on Tuesday agreed to most of the demands of protesting farm labourers. After a meeting with the CM, Mazdoor Morcha leader Lachchman Singh Sevewala said the CM had agreed to their demands and the government would make an announcement and initiate the process of fulfilling their demands. TNS

The NHM employees were kept out of the ambit of the original plan of the government to regularise all contract employees having services of more than 10 years.

Sources said the issue was discussed at a meeting with health officials chaired by Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi last week.

On Thursday, the NHM sent a proposal to the government regarding regularisation of 4,053 employees who qualified the criteria of 10 years of service. Around 30 categories of employees, including medical officers (doctors), ayurveda medical officers, homoeopathic medical officers, nurses, auxiliary nurse midwives, epidemiologists, microbiologists, accounts officers and others, will benefit under the scheme. Besides, 81 employees of 11 categories were also found eligible who are working on the posts that do not exist in the Health Department. The government had to either create fresh posts or stop their regularisation.

Building their case for regularisation, the NHM said the recruitment process of the employees had been fair and transparent, including test and interview, so they met the criteria.

Besides, the NHM authorities said the employees were on the forefront of the battle against Covid and had contributed significantly in the improvement of infant and maternal mortality rates.

“The battle against Covid was not possible without the NHM contract staff. Some of them lost their lives. Their services must be regularised, said Dr Gagandeep Shergill, senior vice-president, PCMS Association.