Over the next four months, nurses affiliated to the Tamil Nadu Nurses Empowerment Association will stage a series of protests to press their key demands.
They plan to begin with a ‘Meet the people campaign’ across all districts from September 24 to 30. Their demands include the halting of low-paid contractual appointments in the Tamil Nadu government medical services, implementation of the DMK’s poll promise to regularise nurses recruited on consolidated pay through the Medical Services Recruitment Board (MRB), and the provision of equal pay for equal work as per a High Court order and the withdrawal of the government’s appeal against the verdict.
In a statement, the association said Tamil Nadu, with a population of over eight crore, has only 30,000 nurses working at government hospitals. Among them, 17,000 are permanent and 13,000 are on contract. Contract nurses perform the same duties as permanent ones, but the latter receive a salary of ₹55,000 per month, while the former are paid ₹18,000 per month, which was raised from ₹7,700 after six years of protests. They urged the government to regularise contract nurses and provide time-scale payment. The DMK had promised in its election manifesto to abolish contract appointments of nurses, regularise, and fill all vacant posts. But in four-and-a-half years, only 3,000 out of 9,000 nurses were regularised. They are working on a contract basis on low pay for eight years, the association said.
