Contract nurses seek job regularisation
CHENNAI: About 800 staff nurses from various districts recruited for Covid-19 duty on a six-month contract and posted at government hospitals protested at the DMS campus on Tuesday demanding that their jobs be regularised.
They said they have been brought under the control of district collectorates as the number of Covid cases has reduced, and the Health department recently passed a GO in this regard and is planning to terminate their jobs.
The nurses started their protest saying they would not leave the premises until the government gives a written statement that their jobs will be regularised. By late evening, a few of them left after Health Minister Ma Subramanian promised to hold talks with representatives of the nurses association on Monday. Additional police personnel were deployed to disperse the protesters.
Meanwhile, Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) founder Kamal Haasan, the Doctors Association for Social Equality, and others extended their support to the protesting nurses by visiting them. A senior Health department official told TNIE, “When Covid-19 was at its peak, the government recruited 3,485 staff nurses purely on a temporary basis.
The nurses were being paid by the National Health Mission-Tamil Nadu. But as they couldn’t pay them, the nurses have been brought under the District Health Society and will be paid by the heads of the hospitals they are posted in.”
This is what the recent GO was about, the official added, and said the nurses will get the same pay of Rs 14,000 per month and their contracts have been extended till December. Kamal Haasan said these nurses risked their lives when the pandemic was at its peak, and the government should not shun them because the number of Covid cases has reduced.
3 school students infected in Kovai
Coimbatore: A private school near Gandhipuram in Coimbatore has been shut for a week after three students recently tested positive for Covid-19. Corporation sources said swab samples have been collected from the contacts of infectees. With many students and teachers testing positive in Coimbatore, the Health department has started conducting medical camps in several locations