SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, Oct 11: State headquarter based contractual employees of National Health Mission (NHM) went on an indefinite strike on Monday, in protest against the dismissal of State Programme Manager (SPM) Jwala Prasad and torture of other employees.
The contractual employees’ body in its letter to the NHM Managing Director has said that unilateral action on the SPM on false charges and misbehaviour with staff have compelled the state headquarters based contractual employees to go on an indefinite strike from today.
“We would continue on indefinite strike until the seven points charter of demands are accepted, ” said the employees’ body in its letter. The Contractual employees’ body alleged that Managing Director in charge Bhuvnesh Prasad Singh behaved roughly with the employees and took different pretexts to sack the staff.
“Today state headquarters based NHM employees have gone on indefinite strike. The programme manager and other contractual staff of all 24 districts would join the strike soon,” said the employees’ body leader.
The main demands of the striking contractual employees are immediate withdrawal of state programme manager and other NHM employees dismissal, immediate check on misbehaviour with employees, restarting of Saturday and Sunday weekly off and other gazetted leaves and deduction of EPF from employees.
Contractual NHM employees’ body has also demanded compensatory leave against the work they did from April 2020 till date, in wake of the Corona pandemic.
Following the strike of NHM employees, immunization, institutional delivery and other programmes of the National Health Mission from headquarter to block-level have been completely paralyzed.
