GH nurses on an all-India indefinite strike - Fusion - WeRIndia

An All India strike by 70,000 nurses employed in government hospitals has been started. This strike is causing a lot of panic across the nation. These nurses began their strike and stopped performing their duties and working only in cases of emergency.

Even though the Union Health Ministry reached out to the nurses, they have denied stopping their strike. The nurses are doing this strike with the demands to the Centre regarding a hike in their allowances and increasing their pay scale quickly.

The negotiations have already started with the All India Government Nurses Federation along with the Nurses Welfare Association (NWA) so that nurses can rejoin the workforce quickly. However, these negotiations have not resulted in anything positive yet.

The strike from nurses is hitting the patients hard now because of 15,000 cases of dengue being reported across the nation. Chikungunya, another vector-borne disease is also rapidly spreading across many areas. In just the National Capital Region (NCR), there have been 500 cases reported. The absence of nurses is causing panic among many patients and hospitals. The strike seems to have a negative effect on the patients who are suffering with these diseases.

Nurses are doing this strike because they are included at the bottom rung of the Central Pay Commission. This means that nurses would have less chance of getting a pay hike as well as increments and increases in allowances.

The nurses association demanded that their pay band should be upgraded. All India Government Nurses Federation has been making this demand to the central government for the past couple of years. They asked the clinical nurses to be included to in the pay band of Rs.5,400. At present, ‘nursing sisters’ and ‘staff nurse’ are in the pay grade of Rs.4,800 and Rs.4,600 respectively. They are also demanding for increase in allowances.

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