With the agitating contractual nurses showing no sign of relenting even as their ceasework agitation entered the ninth day on Monday, the State Government has announced that the process of service regularisation had been initiated.
Health Minister Prasanna Acharya said all the contractual nurses, who have completed six years in service, would be regularised automatically. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has approved the regularisation of the contractual nurses. The concurrence of the Finance Department has also been received.
“The process has commenced and all eligible contractual nurses will be regularised in the next 10 days. If more posts need to be created to absorb the eligible nurses, they would be created immediately,” Acharya said.
In future too, all the contractual nurses would be automatically promoted to regular jobs on completion of six years of service.
While calling upon the agitating nurses to withdraw their stir, the minister said steps are also being taken to remove the pay anomalies. The matter has been sent to the Anomalies Committee and once the recommendations are received, action would be taken instantly.
The Government is also actively considering the issue of raising different allowances extended to the nurses. The uniform and laundry allowance has been proposed to be hiked to ` 3,600, he said appealing to the nurses to join duty in the larger public interest.
However, the agitating nurses have termed the Health Minister’s statement as another attempt to dilute the issue.
The criteria of six years of continuous service for regularisation of jobs is itself wrong and violating the Supreme Court judgment which has stipulated a minimum experience of three years, the All Odisha Contractual Nurses’ Association alleged.
“Further, not more than 100 of the contractual nurses would qualify for regular posts. We have demanded regularisation of services under the Supreme Court-ruled criterion of three years,” association president Gangadhar Panigrahi said.
A six-member delegation of nurses, led by association secretary Shibani Das, also met Chief Secretary BK Patnaik on Monday seeking fulfilment of their demands. “The Chief Secretary has called us again tomorrow and our future course of action will be decided after the meeting,” association leader Malati Tripathy said.
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