SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, May 25: Following assurance of Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Health Arun Kumar Singh, the outsourcing staff at Shahid Nirmal Mahto Medical College Hospital (SNMMCH) Dhanbad called off their six-day old indefinite strike on Wednesday evening and returned to their duty in the morning today.
SNMMCH superintendent Dr AK Barnbal told media persons that on the directive of ACS Health, the outsourcing staff have called off their strike and resumed duty in the hospital.
The ACS Health has assured to take back all 101 retrenched non-technical fourth-grade outsourcing staff under different designations.
The sources said the ACS has approved the formula of Dhanbad Deputy Commissioner (DC) Sandip Singh to adjust all 101 non-technical retrenched staff on vacant posts. The DC playing behind the scene reviewed each post of retrenched staff and sent new proposals to the health department for re-deploying them.
Though the strike has been called off, confusion still prevails among outsourcing staff as the hospital management has not issued a letter regarding the re-deployment of the retrenched staff.
SNMMCH has hired services of 424 staff from Frontline outsourcing company. On May 16, the health department issued a letter to Frontline to reduce its 101 staff working on non-technical posts in the hospital from May 21.
In protest of the retrenchment order, all 424 outsourcing staff had gone on an indefinite strike on May 19.
Since the 577-bed Hospital of SNMMC depends completely on the outsourcing staff, health services, especially in wards, emergency OTs of surgery, orthopaedics and dialysis had been badly affected.
Leaders of all political parties especially Dhanbad Sadar MLA Raj Sinha, Congress Jharia MLA Purnima Singh, former MLA Arup Chatterjee, BJP state president Deepak Prakash and senior BJP leader Ragni Singh jumped in support of the striking staff.
On Wednesday evening BJP Baghmara MLA Dhulu Mahto also reached the hospital in support of the striking staff and talked to ACS Health Arun Kumar Singh and urged him to intervene in the matter as patients in the hospital were suffering.
The ACS Health assured that no one would be retrenched and a letter would be issued soon in this regard.
