KASARGOD: The protesting nurses refused to suspend their strike till the talks with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on July 20. In a meeting called by District Collector Jeevan Babu K on Monday, the nurses said they were not in a position to accept preconditions for the talks with the Chief Minister.
The Collector met the nurses and the representatives of the managements separately in his chamber but could not thrash out a compromise.He had asked the nurses to withdraw their strike in view of the July 20 talks, which they rejected outright. “We told the Collector about the poor working conditions of the nurses, low salary and inhuman shifts,” said Ajeesh Chacko, district secretary of Indian Nurses’ Association, which is leading the strike. The Collector did not counter any of the points raised, he said. Seven nurses, District Medical Officer A P Dinesh Kumar and Additional District Magistrate K Ambujakshan attended the meeting.
Ajeesh said withdrawing the strike for talks would have been self-destructive going by the precedence. Jeevan Babu met the management too, separately. But nothing concrete came out of it either.
The nurses said they were conducting a peaceful protest, and making themselves available in case of emergency. “Till now there is no complaint from the patients or public,” Chacko said. Around 800 nurses from 11 hospitals are on protest.