NHM workers demand job regularisation

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Medical workers employed under the National Health Mission Scheme (NHM) staged a protest demanding regularisation of their jobs. The workers are currently ‘insourced contract workers’, meaning that they are recruited directly by the government after the applicants clear relevant examinations. Their stipulated salary is shared by the union and the state government in a 60:40 ratio. Despite this, they are considered as contract workers.

The union leaders have claimed that over 22,000 insourced NHM employees work across Karnataka. Four months ago, the workers formed the Karnataka State Health and Family Welfare Department NHM Insourced Workers Association. While they had unionised under various organisations divided by the many departments, the workers found a need to bring in all the employees under one bracket.

NHM staff comprises over 182 cadres including nursing, lab assistants, physicians, psychiatrists, dental surgeons, district leprosy consultants, data entry operators and others. Significant population of the staff work under nursing and as Community Health Officers (CHO) and are mandated to have a BSc degree in nursing.

The CHOs must carry out a host of tasks – they often go door to door in order to treat the elderly and infants. They work closely with the ASHA workers and are supposed to identify diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy that are rampant in the community among other communicable and non-communicable diseases.

One of the workers’ said that the salary of four contract workers equals the salary of one permanent worker. NHM staff have been regularised in over six states in the recent past, with the last state taking the initiative being Telangana. In the state of Haryana, the government agreed to fulfil the demands after a long protest of 62 days.